LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



WHAT IS REALITY? 



3n 31nquin? 



AS TO THE REASONABLENESS OF NATURAL 

RELIGION, AND THE NATURALNESS 

OF REVEALED RELIGION 



BY 



FRANCIS HOWE JOHNSON 





I'LHbO 



BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
&fe l&toersi&e press, <£amfcribg? 
1891 






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Copyright, 1891, 
By FRANCIS H. JOHNSON. 

All rights reserved. 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., V. S. A. 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company. 



PREFACE. 



Throughout the following pages it has been the 
aim of the author to indicate faithfully, either in the 
text or in footnotes, the various sources whence he 
has derived assistance. It is, however, a privilege to 
make additional and special mention of three writers. 
To Herman Lotze, to J. B. Stallo, and to Andrew 
Seth the author is particularly indebted for guidance 
at difficult stages of the argument. 

The title of the book was chosen because it sets 
forth in the simplest form of words the subject of the 
discussion. 

It is often said, and very generally believed, that 
science and religion derive their authority from to- 
tally distinct sources; th&t faith begins ivhere science 
leaves off; that science deals with facts that can be 
proved, while religion is the outcome of conceptions 
that have no verifiable attachments in reality. It is 
the object of this book to show that the premises of 
religion are as real as any part of man's knowledge ; 
and that the methods by which its vital truths are 
deduced from these premises are no less legitimate 
than those employed by science. 

Bar Harbor, Me., September 18, 1891. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 



INTRODUCTORY. 



PAGE 



Reality : the agreement of thought with that which is 

external to thought 2 

We know things as groups of events .... 3 
Definite, persistent groups of events attest reality . . 4 
A thing is judged to be real when it fulfills all the prom- 
ises it makes to us 5 

Limits of reality the great question of the day . . 6 
Our conception of spirit as spirit ; reality or illusion ? . 7 
Science ready to prove its positions : old beliefs chal- 
lenged to defend theirs 10 

Feeling not a substitute for reason 11 

Reason, once developed, insists that all beliefs be made 

agreeable to it . .12 

Appeal to revelatiou inadequate, for it assumes that spir- 
itual reality which science questions .... 14 
Our spiritual beliefs in need of readjustment, but capa- 
ble of verification 15 

Concurrence with nature demanded as proof of hypothet- 
ical realities 16 

Faith, founded on reason, claims now a wider range than 
ever .......... 18 

Verification the result of an endless cross-examination of 
experience. Equally applicable objectively and sub- " 

jectively 21 

Illusion rooted in reality 24 



VI TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

The belief in personal identity has been developed like 
other data of consciousness ...... 25 

The same true of the conviction of mental efficiency . 27 

CHAPTER II. 

THE ANSWER OF SUBJECTIVE ANALYSIS. 

Four fundamental propositions of common realism . 29 

But reason urges to logical consistency, and these appear 

mutually inconsistent ....... 30 

Impassable chasm between consciousness and externality 31 
Physical causation seems to coerce mental causation into 

non-existence ..*..... 32 
Kant's development of this antithesis .... 33 
Attempted explanation of it by the distinction between 

phenomena and the thing-in-itself . . . . 33 
More successful destructively than constructively . . 35 
But a great stimulus to system-building .... 36 
Hegel and Fichte assume that everything may be deduced 

from the ego, or the idea 41 

Fichte, content with this, lets externality go, except as 

an aspect of the ego .42 

Hegel attempts to carry over the idea into nature, but 

illusively '. ....... 42 

Hegel has a better sense of the problem, Fichte of the 

limitations of the method 45 

The answer of subjective analysis not satisfactory . . 48 

CHAPTER III. 

THE ANSWER OF OBJECTIVE ANALYSIS; 

Physical realism, appealing constantly to common sense, 
seems to be always in agreement with it . .50 

It claims the indorsement of modern science ... 51 

Herbert Spencer the great English representative of 
physical realism 51 

Like Fichte, assumes that one principle must explain all 
reality . . .52 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. VU 

Unlike him, assumes this to be, not the ego, but the 
" persistence of force " » . . . . .53 

Denies, therefore, mental, as distinct from physical 
causation ......... 55 

Bain's statement of the case 57 

Herbert Spencer allows mind only as the inner face of 
physical reality 58 

This theory rules out not only free will but purposive 
action .......... 61 

His scheme for the scientific reconstruction of common 
realism . 64 

His use, and misuse, of the distinction between impres- 
sions and ideas 65 

Subjective and objective presentations show the same 
contrast between vivid and faint ..... 67 

Distinctness, priority, and simplicity, equally applicable 
on either side ....... 70-74 

The answer of objective analysis excludes one half of 
reality . . . .77 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE ANSWER OF LIFE. 

That proposition expresses reality whose affirmation it is 
necessary to live 79 

Inconceivability a test only within the realm of concepts . 80 

Concrete realities do not admit of absolute agreements 
and contradictions ....... 80 

The realities of life to be decided by an appeal to life . 81 

The degree of our conviction with regard to the reality of 
anything measured by the extent to which it enters 
into life 83 

On this universal necessity of living them rests the inex- 
pugnableness of the four propositions of common 
realism .... ..... 84 

The four may be condensed into two, affirming the caus- 
ality of the world and of mind ..... 84 



Viii TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

The denial of purposive action* plainly involved in phys- 
ical realism, — incapable of abiding the test of life . 88 

In the realm of concrete realities, irreeoncilableness and 
contradictoriness not necessarily the same ... 90 

We cannot fathom the possibilities of any concrete 
reality ...... * ... 91 

Intervening truths emerging are continually reconciling 
the previously irreconcilable . .... 91 

Mechanical realities, cannot, as genuine, suppress spirit- 
ual realities as spurious ...... 93 

Only from a central position in the universe can all real- 
ities be seen as harmonious ...... 94 

Physical science itself obliged, at many points, to assume 
the truth of irreconcilable propositions ... 95 

We make our nearest approach to reality when we enter- 
tain as real a plurality of principles, which we are not 
able directly to combine into a harmonious whole . . 105 

CHAPTER V. 

THE THING-IX-ITSELF. 

Antagonisms of science. Do not these prove that reality 
is unknowable ? 107 

Science and philosophy seem just now to join for agnos- 
ticism 108 

Two schools of skepticism, — the English half-way school 
of Spencer, inconsistent \ the German of Schopenhauer 
and von Hartmann, consistent and thorough-going, and 
therefore pessimistic .....♦< 108 

Unreasonable dilemma of skepticism, —truth absolute 
and final, or illusion • 109 

Our four propositions themselves declared only less vari- 
able than the rest HO 

But their invariable element large, and continually aug- 
menting ......••- H^ 

Convictions of persuasion, and convictions of coercion . 114 

The displacement of old knowledge by new much exag- 
gerated H4: 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. ix 

Illustrations from chemistry and astronomy . . 115, 116 
Relativity of knowledge not illusion . . . .118 

Knowledge of relations is knowledge of reality . . 119 
Cosmic relations do uot discredit terrestrial relations . 121 
Things in themselves, do they exist for thought ? . . 122 
Xoumenon and Phenomenon ...... 124 

Is knowledge merely of a sum of relations ? . . . 125 
Knowledge, arising only through relations, goes beyond 

them 127 

Subjective consciousness of being abides through all ex- 
periences ......... 128 

This ego not isolated from externality, but embodied 

in it 131 

Furnishes a true, though partial analogy for our know- 
ledge of God .132 

CHAPTER VI. 

FROM THE MICROCOSM TO THE UNIVERSE. 

Supposed ancient mariner, becoming possessed of a ter- 
restrial globe, adopts it hypothetically as a representa- 
tion of the earth 133 

Gathers much to support the theory, but dies leaving 
much unverified ........ 134 

Yet his assumption rational, and ultimately verifiable in 
full 134 

Hypothesis of the human microcosm as explanatory of 
the universe much the same ..... 134 

A philosopher, satisfied with physical realism while tra- 
cing external relations, becomes dissatisfied when seek- 
ing a meaning for them 135 

Needs a central, controlling principle, and inquires, 
why? 136 

May reasonably assume it as the result of an analogical 
experience ......... 136 

Finds this in the microcosm, — the ego, in the fullness of 
its relations 137 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



A self-conscious ego the source of creation in the micro- 
cosm, why not also in the universe ? . . 

Analogy, rising from groups to higher groups of organ- 
ized phenomena, dominant in science . 

The hierarchy of principles . 

Periodic law of recurrent similarities in chemistry . 

Mendelejefi's fully verified prophecy of new elements as 
implied in this ....... 

Application in biology ...... 

Molecules not improbably solar systems in miniature 

Relations of the human mind exceedingly complex 

Not more so than those of the egg .... 

No knowledge of evolution except by analogy from the 



Analogies of taxonomic, phylogenetic, ontogenetic series 
The last assumed as explaining the two former, not by 

necessity, but almost entirely by analogy 
We do use the microcosm to explain much of our world 
Ourselves, with subtraction, a norm to explain lower life 

ourselves, with enlargement, a reasonable key to higher 

being ......... 

Lewes answered by Cope . ... 

Concepts of analogy give true relations and true know 

ledge 

The relations of the ego to the physical organism, shall 

we use these to explain God's relation to the world ? 



138 

139 
140 
141 

142 
142 
143 
144 
144 

145 
145 

149 

151 



154 
156 

158 

161 



CHAPTER VII. 



MECHANISM TRANSFORMED. 



If, as Cope assumes, protoplasm is not the exclusive 
basis of mental action, the organized universe itself 
may be an embodied form of it . 

We may also assume an atomic soul as the inner elemen- 
tary reality of the world of things .... 

Atomic indivisibility leaves untouched atomic complexity, 
expressed in multiplicity of reactions .... 

Progressive thought, in philosophy and science, renders 



163 



164 



164 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. XI 

both conceptions, God and the atomic soul, indispen- 
sable 165 

The concept material atom not thereby displaced . . 166 

Different abstractions from a given reality may be used 
side by side for the exploration of different fields of 
thought 168 

God as externally related to the universe a true and legiti- 
mate, but not exhaustive conception .... 169 

The mechanism on which our analogy of the world is 
based, always the outcome of mind . . . . • 170 

Mechanism, if all-extensive, not therefore of necessity 
all-comprehensive . . . . . . 172 

Professor Clifford, in obedience to the law of continuity, 
assumed atomic consciousness ..... 173 

Common-sense objections to this hypothesis to be ex- 
amined 175 

Science (see Jevons) increasingly disinclined to exclude 
any quality, absolutely, from any substance . . 175 

Illustration from conduction and non-couduction . . 176 

Mind, as mind, not necessarily self-determining, but al- 
ways spontaneous and conscious 179 

Chemical hardly distinguishable from the simplest psy- 
chical reactions . 180 

Consciousness never provable, only recognizable from 
analogy 182 

Oft-recurring immobility of life, and restless mobility of 
matter 182 

Mechanism and mind, if coextensive, are not coequal . 184: 

Physical realism subordinates the latter .... 185 

The reverse of this the true order 185 

Mind, as causative, alone explains mechanism, as caused . 186 

Evolution handicapped by mechanism, set free by hylozo- 
ism 188 

Simple, homogeneous can never give qualitative varia- 
tion 190 

The words response, reaction, imply an inner, psychical 
nature of things, and no others express the facts of 
chemistry 191 



XU TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

UNITY IN MULTIPLICITY. 

The atom, indivisible, spontaneous, and of varied activity 
no unapt symbol of the soul as known to itself . . 193 

Unity of being, however, coincident with an amazing 
complexity 193 

Leibnitz, not knowing how to connect these, devised the 

doctrine of preestablished harmony .... 194 

But neither the soul nor the atom has an independence of 
isolation ......... 195 

In chemical combinations we find a symbol of unity in 
multiplicity ......... 195 

A molecule of water is a real unit 196 

Molecular unity and molecular aggregation not always 
easily distinguishable ....... 197 

Organic molecules combine into living organisms, the 
simplest of which are single nucleated cells . . . 198 

These seem to show perception, choice, and movements 
of flight or pursuit 198 

Growing differentiation, passing from aggregation to 
complex unification 199 

In man this ever-increasing unity expressed in the intelli- 
gent, self-asserting ego 203 

But throughout this higher state the cell seems to retain 
its semi-independent life 204 

Lymphatic cells apparently veritable creatures of prey . 204 

Individual psychic efficiency attested by sedentary but 
active nerve cells 205 

Every cerebral element individually differentiated . . 207 

The normal cell has a power of inhibition, strongly sug- 
gesting self-control ....... 208 

The ego consciously related, not to the cells, but to their 
organized groups ........ 209 

The automatic organs, though interdependent, have a 
measure of independence . . . . . 210 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. Xlll 

Specialized activities of lower creatures often surviving 
division 211 

Nerve centres of man, like separate bureaus, each con- 
trolled by its special head 212 

The ego first educates its higher organs, and then de- 
pends upon their automatic faithfulness . . . 213 

Over-indulgence may raise a subordinate centre to almost 
demoniacal predominance 214 

Proofs, in vivisection, that the brain is not the sole seat 
of consciousness 215-217 

Evidence of subordinate personalities, unknown to the 
presiding ego, brought out by Binet and Janet, in 
treatment of hysteria ...... 218-221 

Perhaps the ego dominates a hierarchy of beings . . 222 

Even if this supposition is a mistake, the existence of the 
ego as a unity in multiplicity is an essential and most 
significant fact of our experience . . . 223, 224 

CHAPTER IX. 

IMMANENCY AND TRANSCENDENCY. 

The result reached in the last chapter meets the require- 
ments of a most important desideratum, both in philos- 
ophy and theology 225 

Spinoza disdains imaginative symbols of God . . . 225. 

But imagination, though subject to the criticism of rea- 
son, is the sole constructive faculty .... 226 

The most comprehensive reality of the disciplined imag- 
ination is the human ego, in the fullness of its relations 227 

Man's relations to men, and to machines, two time-hon- 
ored symbols of God's relation to the world . . 228 

These are legitimate and indispensable, but inadequate . 228 

Spinoza's unitary substance amounts to pure nothing, 
from which extension and thought issue in unap- 
proaching parallelism 229 

Essential identity of Spinozaism and modern realism . 230 

Law antecedent to being, as Lotze shows, an illusive 
idea . 231 



XIV TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

Pantheism the unavoidable goal of abstract ontological 
thinking 232 

Here the symbolism of the human person avails, embra- 
cing a diversity of beings, that are distinct yet inter- 
related, and comprehended in the higher personal 
unity . . 233 

This symbolism, approved both by Christ and the Apostle 
Paul, vitalizes the doctrine of the indwelling of the 
Spirit 234 

Immanency and transcendency united by this symbol in 
a living, abiding reality 236 

The knowledge of lower constituent beings progressive 
in the human ego, and doubtless infinite in God , . 238 

The relations of the ego to the social organism supply a 
most valuable supplementary symbolism . . . 239 

A more particular examination of the relations of the ego 
to its constituent beings and of their relations to it and 
to each other 242-247 

Devotion to the Supreme Being can realize itself only by 
faithfulness to organic relations ..... 247 

Organic and personal association less diverse than often 
imagined 248 

Pantheism, regulated by this analogy, becomes an enrich- 
ing element of theism 252 

CHAPTER X. 

EVOLUTION. 

But if the ego is a result, how can it be used as the sym- 
bol of an originating creator ?..... 254 

The simple elements to which evolution is traced not its 
absolute beginnings ....... 255 

The study of external phenomena can never conduct us 
to origins ......... 256 

But knowing ourselves as intelligently causative, we may 
postulate intelligent cause in the orderly adaptations 
of nature ......... 257 

Two theories of non-intelligent causation : unconscious 



TABLE OF CONTEXTS. XV 

internal formative powers ; natural selection by con- 
tact with environment ....... 258 

The former may admit half intelligent effort on the part 
of the creature 259 

Charles Darwin the great champion of environment . 260 

The modification of domestic animals by selection the 
fact on which he builds ...... 261 

Selection an intelligent act ...... 262 

His explanation of the process more properly character- 
ized by the phrase unintelligent impression . . . 263 

This may intensify, but cannot originate forms . . 264 

Only a positive constructive principle can do this . . 264 

Organization quite outside mere variability . . . 266 

Weismann, after the unicellular stage, substitutes amphi- 
gonic reproduction for environment .... 267 

But this cannot raise organisms to a higher plane . . 269 

Internal factors, acting determinately, but mechanically, 
admitted by Spencer, Lewes, Nageli, Eimer . . 269 

Compared with crystallization, as definite, but mechan- 
ical 271 

Nageli holds to a law of improvement, which he ascribes 
to "persistence of motion in the field of organic evo- 
lution" 272 

These mutual contradictions imply a radical defect com- 
mon to all 273 

All give good answers as to various instrumentalities, but 
err in stopping there 273 

The determinations of chemical laws have nothing to do 
with the interests of a delicately balanced organism . 275 

Specialists, criticising specialists, show unconsciously a 
recognition of the need, in evolution, of intelligent 
guidance 276 

Perception, without self-consciousness, might explain all 
human inventions mechanically .... 277-281 

The chain of physical causation, pliant to human intel- 
ligence, cannot be a barrier against divine intelli- 
gence 283 

Man cannot live without recognizing the reality of spirit- 



xvi TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

ual initiative ; why then try to interpret the universe 

without it ? 284 

Divine agency not discredited because sometimes reduced 
to triviality 284 

CHAPTER XI. 

CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE. 

Creation is designed origination ..... 285 

The microcosm, at least, does not accredit the idea of 
origination out of nothing ..*... 285 

We must postulate a Supreme Being who is coexistent 
with the order of nature, and who works by means 
of it 286 

Man's creations are, in the first instance, brain modifica- 
tions 287 

This creation by man is elaborate, without hands, selec- 
tive, progressive 288-290 

The specialized organisms of the brain reproduce their 
kind like animal species 292 

May not the adaptations that we trace to a Supreme 
creative mind be the cumulative outcome of innumer- 
able little minds ? 293 

Are intelligently formed brain modifications transmis- 
sible in any degree ? 295 

They may be in the lower animals though not in men . 297 

The herding instinct in young collies seems to prove this . 298 

The instincts of many insects not traceable to intelli- 
gence 299-302 

Embryotic instincts as foreseeing and marvelously adap- 
tive as any . . . . . . . . 303 

In instincts like those of the sphex and the embryo we 
seem to have come to the end of organized experience 305 

The law of continuity requires us, where intelligence fails 
in the lower sphere, to seek it in the higher . . 306 

The human ego, not simply as originating, but as en- 
throned, guides a process of universal evolution, ex- 
traordinarily like that of protoplasmic life at large . 308 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. XV11 

There is the same appearance of non-finality, of increas- 
ing elaboration, of improvement, of consecutiveness of 
thought in natural and in human evolution . . . 310 

It cannot be irreverent to say that God is limited in his 
working by his ends or by his means .... 311 

This limitation a necessary inference from the main drift 
of Scriptural representations . . . . .311 

Lesser intelligences, as in the human organism, may con- 
trol most of the details of the great process without 
excluding the divine agency from any point . . 312 

CHAPTER XII. 

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 

Unconscious intelligence a contradiction in terms that 
points to some apparent contradiction of facts . . 314 

Our primary perceptions, it is said, imply antecedent un- 
conscious reasoning . ..... 315 

Most of our activities show automatic intelligence . . 317 

Unconscious cerebration ....... 317 

But intelligence outside consciousness now has not neces- 
sarily been outside consciousness always . . . 317 

Conscious intelligence trains the subordinate centres to 
a sgmz-independent intelligence 319 

Renewed vigor of hard-worked subordinate agents, after 
rest and recuperation, a partial explanation of " uncon- 
scious cerebration "....... 322 

The cerebral plexus itself, and the inspiring impulses 
which visit us, are rationally referred, by the law of 
continuity, to the divine intelligence .... 324 

Two quite distinct applications of the philosophy of the 
unconscious ......... 325 

One theory locates unconscious intelligence in the crea- 
ture, one in an all-comprehensive Being of unconscious 
but unlimited wisdom and creative power . . . 325 

J. J. Murphy assumes unconscious intelligence in the 
lower animals, E. D. Cope, unintelligent consciousness : 
each phrase alike a contradiction in terms . . .327 



xvm TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

Even Haeckel detaches from mind certain of its charac- 
teristics and uses these as if they had the efficiency of 
the unmutilated whole 329 

Von Hartmann, on the other hand, assumes an infinitely 
wise unconscious All-One . . . . . . 330 

The whole strength of his philosophy is owing to the fact 
that it is a philosophy of the intelligent . . . 331 

He illustrates and enforces every theistic argument from 
adaptation 333 

Dwells strongly on the consensus gentium, but arbitrarily 
strips away its universal recognition of creative con- 
sciousness ......... 336 

Schopenhauer, Hartmann, Cope, Murphy, all true in 
affirmation, arbitrary in negation .... 337 

Hartmann's denial of consciousness is really nothing 
more than the assumption that God's consciousness is 
not like man's = 338 

His " conscious philosophy of the unconscious " is rather 
an unconscious philosophy of the conscious . . . 340 

CHAPTER XIII. 

OPTIMISM. 

This conclusion of a Supreme Being, originating and 
directing the world process, embarrasses us with a 
wealth of seemingly incoherent purposive intelligence . 342 
Special adaptations everywhere in conflict . . . 343 
Does God train gladiators, and, like Odin, delight in their 

combats? 347 

The Christian ideal not maintainable if we assume that 
God could as easily develop his creation without con- 
flict 349 

Optimism of the school of Rousseau an hallucination . 350 

Our present reaction not less wild 351 

Struggle for existence within each species enormously 

exaggerated 352 

Progressive development favored more by mutual support 
than by mutual struggle 353 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. xix 

From unicellular life up, cooperation has been continu- 
ally gaining on conflict ...... 355 

Bees both organically and intelligently cooperative . 357 

The family the transition from the former to the latter . 358 
The nation, however imperfect its development, a symbol 

and prophecy of the Kingdom of Heaven . . . 358 
Conscience an ever present indication that God works 

in us for the realization of this kingdom . . . 359 
Conscience, instinctive, yet in some respects antithetic to 

physical instinct 359 

Hedonism utterly untransformable into conscience . . 360 
Matthew Arnold and Maudsley, neither a theist, both 
give as the result of their thought an essentially moral 
power working in man through the conscience to realize 
moral ideals ........ 362 

Why so long a conflict ? Have factors been introduced 
that have proved unmanageable ? 363 

CHAPTER XIV. 

THE NATURALNESS OF REVELATION. 

Evolution as a universal principle modifies all our con- 
ceptions 366 

Isolated sections of thought will above all need rear- 
rangement ......... 367 

Natural and supernatural have hitherto been distin- 
guished as orderly and anomalous .... 367 

Creation and revelation classed as the latter . . . 367 

Science has enforced, more and more, the opposite idea 
of order and uniformity as all-embracing . . . 368 

Evolution antiquates this antithesis by embracing both its 
terms . . .369 

The laws of nature have now become flexible forces, 
modes and resources of divine working, continuously 
creative 370 

The matter of revelation having been always present, 
the ever-growing receptivity of it came in with 
man 371 



XX TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

Gratuitous endowment yields to provision for discipline 

through effort 372 

Both in the physical and in the intellectual departments 
the treasures divinely granted in the world must be 

won by overcoming . 373-376 

The knowledge of God likewise, vague in the beginning, 

must be sought and won 377 

Are the above mentioned factors sufficient for a career of 

unlimited development ? 378 

Evolution as a process of specialization tends to stagnate . 379 
New types originate in the less specialized lines . . 379 
Bagehot — formation of cake of custom, first step : 

breaking of it, second 380 

Ancient social types, both religious and political, rigid . 381 
Restlessness of instinct may break an old type, but not 

form a new 382 

Revelation alone, not confined to religion, can do this . 384 
Instances : the idea of human brotherhood ; truth for 

its own sake ; unity of God 386 

Transformation of civic, or ancestral, and of nature re- 
ligion 387-389 

Transitional distancing of religion by ethics . . . 389 
Experience soon demonstrated that the latter required 

the former . . . 390 

Philosophy then began to seek God 390 

Could not create revelation, but was ready to receive it . 391 
Strange aberrations — worship of Mithras . . . 391 
Above all Judaism was influential — Proselytes of the 

Gate s: • • 391 

The prophetic, not the sacerdotal side, received" . . 392 
Prophecy affirms of God essential characteristics that 

philosophy cannot harmonize ..... 394 
Not systematized speculation, but immediate knowledge . 394 
Prophets not mere organs of national consciousness . 396 
Creative personal guidance coming into later human his- 
tory is repetition on a higher scale .... 397 
Revelation superhuman, but in accord with the order of 
nature . . 397 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. xxi 

CHAPTER XV. 

THE INFALLIBLE CHURCH. 

God does not solve the problems which He has intended 
man to solve for himself ...... 399 

In the most perfect educational system, however, the 
teacher intervenes, when needed ..... 400 

Revelation helps reason and conscience, it is not a substi- 
tute for them 401 

Yet Catholicism affirms this substitution for the Church, 
and current Protestantism for the Bible . . . 402 

God consults man's good, not always his desire for spir- 
itual ease 404 

Developed Protestantism holds church and Bible as helps, 
not substitutes, for personal appropriation of revealed 
truth 406 

Christianity continuous with Jewish prophecy, not with 
priesthood and rabbinism 407 

Christ founds the church on principles, not prescriptions 408 

Christianity a religion of a highly generalized type . . 409 

The absolutism of Rome not derived from Christianity . 410 

Authority not evil so long as needed .... 410 

Up to a certain point conservation of type as needful as 
variation 410 

When the hour for progress comes, unprogressive types, 
once invaluable, become deadly 410 

CHAPTER XVI. 

THE INFALLIBLE BOOK. 

Nature gives many free gifts, but more in the germ . 411 
The Bible follows nature if it does the same . . .411 
Infinite variety of the Bible and difficulty of immediately 

synthesizing its different parts 413 

God gives responses to present wants, and other re- 
sponses calculated to elevate the wants . . . 414 
Our Saviour, as priest, provided for the present, but his 



xxil TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

distinctive work was that of a prophet declaring and 
initiating a higher type ...... 416 

The same thing true of apostolic activity and teaching . 420 

Churches admonished by apostles not to rest on the easy 
truths of the beginning 421 

Infallibility, as applied to the Bible, a survival of the 
Catholic type 422 

Keen criticism of Newman on its incongruity with the 
true function of the Bible ...... 423 

Infallibility, if confined to God, leaves for the Bible all 
the authority that can attach to a book . . . 424 

All historic systems of theology have had their propor- 
tions determined by the supposed needs of the society 
for which they were formed 426 

The refusal to growing ethical ideals of an interpretative 
function for the Bible threatens to reopen the earlier 
gulf between religion and morality .... 428 

Constant action and reaction between the Bible and the 
moral nature sets free the highest revelation of God in 
the Bible, it does not arbitrarily dictate the revelation . 430 

Fatherhood, the ultimate Biblical type of God, plastic, 

comprehensive, elastic, and yet determinate . . 433 

The equation of the Bible and the moral consciousness a 
true equation 434 



CHAPTER XVII. 

MIRACLES. 

Evolution accredits miracles by transforming nature into 
a succession of surprises ' 435 

Miracles, like Bible and church, meant to stimulate, not 
suppress, the religious reason ..... 436 

Considered merely as wonderful works (apart from their 
parabolical value), Christ treats miracles as essentially 
subordinate 437 

Praises a faith that does not need them .... 438 

Paul puts miracles last of the four great ministries . 439 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. xxin 

Protestantism, more virile than Catholicism, lays less 
stress on miracles ....... 439 

Christianity, appealing directly to the individual, was at 
first accompanied with an affluence of these immediate 
divine testimonies ....... 440 

Instance : Christ's confirmation of his forgiveness of sin 
by the cure of the paralytic 442 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE CONTINUITY OF THE PROCESS. 

Creation and salvation different phases of the same pro- 
cess . . . 444 

Our conception of the first cannot be modified without 
affecting our idea of the second 445 

Salvation the rescue of both product and process from 
failure .... 445 

The realization of the life principle of a germ is its sal- 
vation 446 

The Saviour's parables full of such analogies . . . 446 

Two great epochs of moral history : before Christ, and 
since Christ 447 

The latter, as better known, should interpret the former 447 

The narrative of the Fall shows the sense of sin as awak- 
ened by moral illumination ...... 448 

Evolution emphasizes this hitherto neglected factor . 449 

Innocence possible without illumination, but not right- 
eousness 449 

The Fall therefore is also a rise in the scale of being, and 
this latter aspect is the most important . . . 450 

The foreground of darkness has a background of light . 451 

The consciousness of sin, at first concrete and limited, 
slowly generalizes itself ...... 451 

The lower self, once revealed as such, may, through 
moral inertia, be chosen instead of the higher . . 452 

The higher nature revealed as an authority within the 
soul, yet external to it 453 

Variation of the lower, habitual nature, may add zest to 



XXIV TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

life ; but an attempted revolution of it provokes to 
dogged resistance . 454 

Not the acts only to be changed, but the channels of de- 
sire and habit 455 

Sin a choice of self realization on a lower plane than 
that indicated by conscience 456 

Three courses possible : obedience to conscience, even 
though halting ; evasion ; resistance .... 45G 

Elements, and in a measure fruits, of salvation, found 
from the beginning ....... 457 

Did Christ bring in a newness of kind, or only of degree ? 460 

The latter the basis of the former 460 

He brought a new illumination, and thereby a deeper 
condemnation 461 

The first stage in Christian salvation was therefore, in the 
profoundest sense, a/all 462 

The deep consciousness of sin stamped on the mind of 
the race by its own act, in the crucifixion . . . 463 

Man, in the mirror of Christ, knows himself out of joint, 
and must rise or consciously degenerate . . . 464 

Why this apparent excess of illumination was necessary 465 

Forgiveness is, as regards the future, relaxing and ideal- 
obscuring ......... 466 

The law of the " spirit of life " more than counterbal- 
ances the Christian fall 467 

Christianity goes higher than self-realization ; gives self- 
realization in God 468 

Every element in Christian salvation the repetition, on a 
higher scale, of a factor that was previously energizing 
in the world . . 468 

Christ and Paul both recognize the continuity . . 470 

The revelation of the indwelling of the spirit transforms 
the impotence of helpless desire into the efficacious 
energy of filial love 471 

Every man an active participator in his own salvation . 472 

God is no longer apprehended merely as assisting the 

soul, but as energizing within it . . . , . 473 

We never outgrow the tree of the knowledge of good 
and evil 474 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. XXV 

APPENDIX A. 

THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIENCE. 

The moral sense has originated from the same source as 
our other instincts 475 

Theists often unwilling to allow conscience as natural, 
because they have thought of nature as an unobstructed 
current 475 

But the course of nature is a conflict and an over- 
coming 476 

Nature knows self-surrender as well as self-assertion : 
the growth of a tree is the latter, its flowering the 
former 477 

This analogy repeatedly made use of by Christ . . 479 

If man is derived from lower natures by differentiation, 
so may conscience be derived from the unmoral by 
differentiation 479 

To affirm the evolution of conscience is not to deny its 
reality 480 

The blossom evolved from what would have been the 
leaf, yet not itself a leaf 480 

Epigenesis implies that a uew element has been super- 
added 481 

Evolution in connection with, rather than evolution from . 482 

Fatuity of trying to account for everything by the few 
factors known to us 483 

Conscience closely and originally conjoined with pain and 
pleasure, but never explainable from them . . 484 

The most far-sighted and self -restraining selfishness is 
thereby no nearer unselfishness 485 

Primary instincts imperative before pleasure is known as 
the result 486 

Primary instinct underivable ; then intelligence ; then 
much of this lapses into secondary instinct . . 487 

Conscience is both primary and secondary instinct . . 488 

The categorical imperative primary ; its developments 
and applications secondary 489 



xxvi TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

The conflict of a divided self illustrated in the behavior 
of birds . 490 

Not till one of two such impulses is recognized as imply- 
ing a higher self does the sense of obligation arise. 
Here is the birth of conscience 491 

Which is the superior impulse may be variously appre- 
hended; that the superior ought to be obeyed is inva- 
riably apprehended 492 

In every radical instinct it is our privilege and duty to 
recognize God as acting directly 493 

The rational element is slowly developed and variable . 494 

The conscience of prescription important, but not abso- 
lute 496 

The prophetic conscience, evolving ever higher moral 
ideals, the organ of unlimited development . . . 497 

Our ignorance of the goal toward which conscience leads 
signifies little, if He who leads us is in the light . . 498 

APPENDIX B. 

THE NECESSITY OF CONFLICT. 

A world of vital happiness without conflict a baseless 
imagination 499 

All life, from the very germ, is antagonism against the 
forces of death 499 

Life expands in the direction of conflict .... 500 

The necessity of overcoming, the occasion of all joy and 
gayety 501 

Strange blundering of our rudimentary self-knowledge 
in the pursuit of happiness 501 

Because every want, being gratified, disappoints, many 
philosophies regard the cessation of wants as the 
summum bonum 502 

Illustrated in Ecclesiastes 502 

Neglect of the fact that each pursuit has given happi- 
ness 503 

Fully realized being is, like wants fully met, disappoint- 
ing 504 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. XXVU 

Happiness the concomitant of progress . . _. . 504 
Each want evolves a higher want, and in that a new crea- 
ture 505 

Happiness only one end ; evolution of moral character 
another ......... 505 

Right cannot be manipulated to mean agreeable, as by 

Herbert Spencer 506 

Perfection not stagnation ...... 506 

Love, the ever-evolving want, points to a continual prog- 
ress 507 

The ever-expanding ideal secures an ever-expanding per- 
sonality 507 

Conflict with the lower self may and should reach a term 507 
But external fields of activity, and cooperation with God, 
can never be exhausted 507 



WHAT IS REALITY? 



CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTORY. 
I. 

What is reality? Surely everything is real. 
Everything is real that enters into my thought as a 
modifying influence. The dream is real, the hallu- 
cination is real, the mirage is real. No act of con- 
sciousness leaves me just as it found me. It has 
effected something in me ; and, as I am a part of 
the world, it is also a part of the world. The dream, 
the hallucination, and the mirage are all factors in 
the great sum of things that make up the universe. 

Who can gainsay this answer ? and what need is 
there of further question ? Is not our intellectual 
house thoroughly swept and put in order? Ay, 
truly, it is swept, and we, as it were, swept out of it. 
For, if this is a final and satisfactory answer to our 
question, that which we distinctively call thought 
comes to an end. We may still be sentient, emo- 
tional, imaginative beings. But as soon as we cease 
to compare, to classify, and to set a value upon our 
conceptions as more or less true, more or less real, 
we can hardly be said to be intellectual. 



2 WHAT IS REALITY? 

Let us see, then, what we mean by reality. There 
is more than one signification to the word ; and the 
one under which we have been considering it has 
never interested us, for the very reason that it gives 
rise to no question. Another, that does interest 
every one, easily suggests itself. We live in two 
worlds, — immediately, in the world of our own con- 
sciousness, the subjective world of ideas ; medi- 
ately, through our senses, in the larger world of 
things. Many of our ideas are conceptions of things. 
These conceptions may be true or false. They may 
be the counterparts of the external objects which 
they represent, they may be quite different from 
them. Let us say, then, that reality is the agree- 
ment of our thought with that which is external to 
our thought. 

But again a mocking answer is ready for us, — 
Nothing is real. Nothing in the external world 
can be truly represented to the mind. Certain 
changes take place in the nerve tissues of the brain ; 
and, concomitantly with these, images present them- 
selves to the mind. This is all we can ever know. 
The true nature of that which produces the changes 
in the brain must be forever hidden from us. 

It is true that we all see, in a general way, the 
same things. But this has no bearing upon the 
question of their reality. It is only the result of the 
circumstance that our organizations are similar. If 
our organizations were not similar, there would be 
no similarity in our conceptions of things. This is 
not mere hypothesis. It is proved by the testimony 
of every-day life. No two of us see exactly the same 



INTBODUCTOBY. 3 

things, because our organizations, though similar, 
are not identical. They are not only different at 
birth, but they become so modified by different 
courses of education that the mental images formed 
in different minds by contact with the same environ- 
ment are often exceedingly dissimilar. 

This is discouraging. But we will not give up 
the quest. There must be some rational, common- 
sense meaning to our interrogative ; otherwise, why 
should we be forever characterizing things as we do ? 
Why do we say of certain conceptions that they rep- 
resent reality, and of others that they are illusions f 
We will try again. But first let us see clearly why 
we accomplished nothing with our second meaning. 
We said, reality is the agreement of our thought 
with that which is external to our thought. Now 
the word that may refer to a thing or being, or, on 
the other hand, it may refer to an event, an act, or a 
process. 

The foregoing disparagement of our proposition 
is pertinent only to the first meaning. The denial 
of our knowledge of reality cannot be extended to 
the second. We do know e6/ 7ents. Every sensation 
is a well-known event. It may be true that we can 
have no direct knowledge of the essential nature, or 
of the whole nature, of things. But we may say, and 
say truly, that what we call things are groups of 
events. We know them to be what they are by the 
effects which they produce upon us and upon each 
other. We know, in other words, the activities of 
things, the behavior of things, — in short, we know 
their qualities. If these activities did not appear to 



4 WHAT IS REALITY ? 

us in definite, persistent groups, there would be no 
meaning to the word " reality " other than that which 
led to our first answer, — Everything is real. But 
they do appear to us in definite, persistent groups, 
and hence the distinction between reality and illu- 
sion. A thing is judged to be real, that is, the 
thing that we have conceived it to be, when it pre- 
sents itself with the full complement of its known 
qualities. It often requires examination to deter- 
mine this point. And if examination discloses the 
absence of qualities that we had assumed to be pres- 
ent, we say our conception, our ideal thing, was an 
illusion. 

Most of the things of the external world are 
known to us as very complex groups of activities. 
They are groups of groups. In some cases all our 
senses contribute to our knowledge of a thing, and 
there is a different group for each sense. This is at 
the same time the cause and the cure of illusions. 
Sometimes it is inconvenient and sometimes it is im- 
possible to test the reality of a thing by an appeal to 
all the senses that are capable of testifying with re- 
gard to it. We thereft,. form many offhand judg- 
ments. We experience, through the sense of sight, 
a group of sensations that is the distinctive charac- 
teristic of a well-known object, and we immediately 
infer that the object is there ; that is, that the power 
of producing other familiar groups of sensations is 
associated with the power to produce this one. In 
most cases our inference is correct. But sometimes 
we are mistaken. The sense of touch, we will say, 
refuses to corroborate the sense of sight. Then we 



INTRODUCTORY. 5 

know that we have been deceived, that we have be- 
lieved in the existence of that which has no existence, 
that we have imagined ourselves to sustain to our 
environment certain relations that we do not sustain. 
The vision of the thing, as it first came to us, was 
very real, and so also were the expectations that it 
excited. The sight of the mirage-created lake in the 
burning desert is a reality to the weary traveler. It 
delights his eye and gladdens his heart as much as if 
it were the sight of a real lake ; but it will not as- 
suage his thirst, or send him on his way with new life 
in his veins. The happiness of the deceived one is 
very real while it lasts, and so is his more lasting 
misery when he discovers his lake to be an illusion. 
Let us say, then, a thing is real when it is capable 
of fulfilling the promises it makes to us. 

II. 

We may now go on to consider a somewhat differ- 
ent application of the word. We have been regard- 
ing it as a quality or characteristic of things. Now 
let us think of it as a realm of real things. We 
say of a given appearance it is a reality. Our ques- 
tion, then, relates to the aggregate of realities that we 
call the actual world. Assuming that a real world 
is known to us, what are its limits ? What classes 
of things or beings, of events or processes, are en- 
titled to have the stamp of reality put upon them ? 
This is the vital question of our day. I mean the 
day that dawned with the Renaissance. Not that it 
was unheard of until that dawning. It has been the 



6 WHAT IS REALITY? 

watershed of philosophic thought in all ages. But 
ever since that great intellectual awakening, the 
Western mind has been going through a transform- 
ing process with regard to its realities that may, 
without exaggeration, be likened to organic change. 
This change has not been confined to any one depart- 
ment. But on every hand, now here, now there, we 
have been called upon to readjust our ideas, — to ac- 
cept unfamiliar verities, and to cast down some of 
those that have longest held sway over the imagina- 
tion. Nor has this process come to an end. Our lot 
is cast in the very midst of it. The most vital ques- 
tions with regard to reality, those that pertain to 
the very foundations, not only remain unsettled, but 
are to-day, because unsettled, agitating the minds of 
men more than they have at any other period of the 
world's history. And well they may, for we have 
more at stake. 

We have spoken of the foundations, but we shall 
designate what we have in mind more truly if we 
change the figure and say the roots. Our intellec- 
tual and moral world is but crudely thought of when 
it is likened to a building, a thing without life or 
growth. It is a living, growing, changing reality. 
It is like an organism. It is a great tree that has 
spread its branches wide and struck its roots deep. 
It is easy to change the foundations of a building, 
to take down, section by section, the crumbling ma- 
sonry, and replace it with that which is sound. But 
it is not so easy to furnish an old tree with new roots. 
There are those, however, who would undertake this 
for our civilization with a light heart, — who imagine 



INTRODUCTORY. 1 

that what is best in it will grow just as spontaneously, 
and with more vigor, from conceptions radically un- 
like those from which it has sprung. 

But we must be more explicit. Surely the old 
tree has survived no small amount of root-pruning, 
and will unquestionably have to be subjected to a 
good deal more. What are these conceptions that 
are judged to be of such vital importance ? To 
come directly to the point, I will say that the first 
question we wish to discuss in the following pages is 
this : Is our conception of spirit as spirit the coun- 
terpart of a reality, or is it an illusion f When we 
think of the mind of man as a centre of efficiency, 
as an originating causative entity, are we dreaming 
a dream? are we simply personifying atoms and 
forces ? or are we contemplating the inmost reality 
of the world ? 

This I have called a vital question, but is it so ? 
Is it not rather one for philosophers to sharpen their 
wits upon ? and will not the practical, non-philoso- 
phical world go on its way just the same, no matter 
what course the controversy may take ? To a certain 
extent it undoubtedly will. The philosophical the- 
ories of men often seem to be quite unrelated to 
their daily activities. They plough and sow and reap, 
they buy and sell, they build houses and barns, much 
the same whether they call themselves idealists or 
materialists, whether they believe in a God or profess 
themselves to be agnostics. In short, they do all 
those things which they must do for the preservation 
and enjoyment of life without much regard to the 
logic of the thing. 



8 WHAT IS MEALITY? 

But this certainly is not the whole of life. Men 
always have formed and always will form for them- 
selves conceptions that transcend the constraining 
influences of material surroundings. They will not 
forbear trying to interpret the intimations that life 
begets of existences other and higher than them- 
selves. In that which is they discover prophecies of 
something better that is to be. They frame ideals 
as to that which might be and which ought to be ; 
and they shape, or try to shape, their lives to the 
achievement of these ideals. 

Now, every one of these most potent factors in 
human development is the offspring of our concep- 
tion of spirit as spirit. Our belief in a possible self 
better than the self we know is a purely spiritual 
conception. Our thought of God is but the analo- 
gical expansion of our thought of ourselves. All 
moral distinctions have grown directly from the con- 
viction that each human individual is a soul. The 
feelings of obligation and responsibility could never 
have found their way into consciousness except for 
this same conviction. All those sentiments that we 
rely upon to make men strong in temptation, to 
steady them in adversity, to make them capable of 
sacrifices, have their root in this. 

Substitute for this the conception presented to 
us by the physical realist, and what meaning have 
'we left in the word self-respect f How can we re- 
spect that which is a mere aggregate of atoms and 
forces? In what sense can we feel shame or re- 
morse for any result of the interaction of these ele- 
ments? Everything like praise for what we have 



INTRODUCTORY. 9 

been accustomed to call " good actions " would not 
simply be out of place, it would be utter inanity. To 
continue to blame people for evil behavior would be 
like continuing to burn them for witchcraft after 
every one was convinced of the unreality of witch- 
craft. 

But why should we enumerate the changes that 
this intellectual revolution would necessitate ? In 
order to make the list complete we should have to 
touch upon every department of life. It is not reli- 
gion and morality alone that would have to surrender 
their claims. This inherited conviction of ours that 
we are originating, responsible souls, while it is the 
ground of all our social relations, at the same time 
underlies every aesthetic emotion and judgment. Our 
imagination cannot begin to follow the results of 
such a substitution. It cannot, by any possibility, 
exaggerate them. 

III. 

When science, with a freshly elaborated, vivid 
reality, forces its way into the society of our settled 
beliefs, the latter are taken at a disadvantage. It 
is as when a modern army threatens a community 
whose defenses are of the most antiquated and un- 
disciplined sort. Our old beliefs are sufficiently 
well organized on a peace footing, but they obtained 
possession of their realm so long ago, and there has 
been so little serious opposition to their authority, 
that they have at their disposal neither the weapons 
nor the tactics to meet the trained forces of science. 



10 WHAT IS BEALITY? 

For instance, our belief in spirit as spirit is one that 
came to us as an inheritance. We have never 
found it necessary to justify it by a process of rea- 
soning. Its credentials, if it ever had any, have 
been so long lost sight of that they are practically 
wow-existent. 

Just the reverse of this is true of the scientific 
belief that comes to try conclusions with it. It is 
ready to prove everything. It does not refer to 
habit or custom or prestige for its right to be. It 
rests its case solely upon that which is, that which 
can be tested, verified, and shown to be real. Its 
affirmations are supported by redoubtable infer- 
ences, and behind each one of these is a corps of 
facts that has been trained down to the last degree 
of efficiency. All its members work together with a 
precision that nothing less well organized can stand 
against. 

There is no denying that this is an awkward state 
of things for our old beliefs. What is it best to 
do ? There is first to be considered the policy of 
wcm-resistance. We are in no position to repel this 
form of attack by an appeal to reason. Let us there- 
fore refuse to reason. Let the opposition have it all 
their own way. Let them prove and demonstrate 
to their hearts' content. Let them vaunt their own 
superiority, and pity the intellectual weakness of 
our positions. We are not subjugated. The vic- 
tory of our adversaries will be a purely formal one. 
We have still on our side the certainties of the emo- 
tional world, the verities of feeling. Men have in 
all ages believed firmly in realities that could not 



IN TR OD UCTOR Y. 11 

be demonstrated, and they will continue to do so. 
The natural world may seem to testify against us, 
but the supernatural, the realm of religious belief, 
rules the imaginations of men with greater power. 
As Cardinal Newman has said, "deductions have 
no power of persuasion. The heart is commonly 
reached, not through the reason, but through the 
imagination. . . . After all, man is not a reasoning 
animal ; he is a seeing, feeling, contemplating, act- 
ing animal." * 

There is unquestionably much truth in these con- 
siderations. The heart is every day winning victo- 
ries over the head. Feeling and imagination are 
mighty powers in the world. And could we take 
into our calculation the history of the whole human 
race, setting over against the actions that have been 
the outcome of a logical process those that proceed 
from the direct stimulation of consciousness, we 
should be obliged to say that man, as represented by 
the balance, is not a reasoning animal. But, after 
all, he is a reasoning animal ; and under certain edu- 
cational influences he reasons a great deal more than 
he does under others. 

It is said of the Chinese that they never ask of a 
religion, Is it true ? but Is it good ? 2 This is very 
interesting to us, because it is the reverse of our 
habit. We certainly have respect to the fruits of a 
religion : we insist that they shall be good. But we 
are not indifferent to its truth. We are so made up 
that we cannot truly reverence, or be much influ- 

1 Grammar of Assent, chap. iv. 

2 The Chinese, by Dr. Martin, p. 123. 



12 WHAT IS REALITY? 

enced by, a belief that we suspect of being without 
foundation in reality. 

However carefully we may conform to the obser- 
vances of such a religion, we secretly despise it, ac- 
cording to the measure of our distrust. And, how- 
ever beautiful and moving its accessories may be, we 
are as little inclined to make real sacrifices for it as 
we are to be led into battle by a commander who is 
brave and enthusiastic but nothing more. For better 
or for worse we are wedded to enlightenment, and it 
is useless for us to fight against the fruits of this 
alliance. Under its influence we become more and 
more reasoning animals, more and more capable of 
acting and suffering for reason, less and less willing 
to lend ourselves to that which seems unreasonable, 
or to honor those who do. 

In the evolution of animal life on our planet, there 
was a time when there was no such thing as air- 
breathing or lung-breathing creatures. The dry land 
had not yet appeared, and gill-breathing was the 
condition of existence. But with the emergence of 
the land there was added the possibility of a new 
and higher kind of existence. Fishes could not 
avail themselves of this possibility. But somehow 
animals with lungs appeared on the scene, and they 
took possession of the earth. But these higher 
species could never go back to their old estate. In 
gaining the higher condition they had lost the 
lower. 

Just so it has been with the development of the 
reasoning faculty in man. Having once learned to 
live by it, we cannot turn the course of development 



INTRODUCTORY. 13 

backward and live without it. "We cannot honor it 
in one department of our thought and exclude it 
from another. If we try to do it our inconsistency 
will betray us. For, so strong is our craving for a 
rational indorsement of our beliefs, that, notwith- 
standing our repudiation of reason, we shall find 
ourselves continually resorting to it for our own 
comfort and for the support of others, — glorying in 
it if it indorses our convictions, happy to lay our 
burdens upon it, but unwilling to follow its lead. 
We cannot, therefore, adopt the policy of wo?z-resis- 
tance. We must meet the new reality with reason, 
or make up our minds to lose that which it assails. 

The next question, then, for us to settle is, how 
shall we meet it ? There is the old way, — that 
which confronts the realities of nature with the real-' 
ities of revelation. Revealed religion has always 
justified itself with facts and with arguments, and its 
arsenal was never fuller of these than it is to-day. 
How will it do to defend ourselves something as 
follows ? The word of God communicated in the 
Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, and the 
miracles of which these contain the record, are facts 
whose testimony is more direct, more easily inter- 
preted, than those that are so miscellaneously brought 
together for the purposes of science. These latter 
have only the most remote connection with the con- 
scious life of man. They are dumb realities in com- 
parison with those that address themselves immedi- 
ately and plainly to his spiritual understanding. Let 
us, then, fall back on the truths of revelation. They 
are on a higher plane than the truths of science, and 



14 WHAT IS BEAUTY? 

it can never reach them. No reasoning can prove 
that Jesus Christ did not rise from the dead. 

This answer to the demonstrations of science has 
seemed a sufficient one to many. But really it is no 
answer at all. For it is based upon the assumption 
of that very reality that science pronounces to be an 
illusion. It does not give battle to the invaders ; it 
only tries to get away from them. In short, there 
is no way out of this difficulty except by going to 
the very bottom of things. Our old beliefs cannot 
retain their intellectual supremacy unless we meet 
science on its own ground in the discussion of the 
fundamental question to which we have invited the 
reader. 

Everything comes back to this. Every question 
'that divides the agnostic from the believer finally re- 
solves itself into this one. And we can never have 
intellectual peace or strength till we have answered 
it. We must come down from our proud eminence 
of prestige and authority to train ourselves in the 
realities of the present. Does science refer to facts 
that can be verified ? so must we. Does it prove its 
positions step by step ? so must we. If we wish to 
retain our hold upon all those higher experiences 
and convictions that are of so much worth, we must 
for the time separate ourselves from them, and oc- 
cupy our thoughts with the commonplace experiences 
that are known not simply to the elect, but to every 
living man. 

Doing this, we shall not only be able to fight 
our way back to them, but shall at the same time 
conquer for them an intellectual position that will 



INTRODUCTORY. 15 

greatly increase their power. All the world over, 
it is necessity that coerces us to the acquisition of 
the best things. And if religion, by its controver- 
sies with science, is forced to develop its rational, 
intellectual side into a full and honorable equality 
with its emotional, we shall, in the end, have to thank 
our antagonist not only for its contradictions, but also 
for its invaluable lessons as to method. What we at 
first regretted as a menace will then be recognized 
as the source of our greatest gain. 

There is a story of a benighted traveler, who, 
stumbling over a precipice, arrested his fall by 
grasping a shrub that grew upon its edge. He could 
not pull himself up, for the shrub had no firm hold 
upon the soil. He felt it continually loosening under 
the strain of his weight. His only hope was that 
some one might come to rescue him from above. But 
no one came. The shrub gave way. Yet the fate 
that seemed so inevitable did not follow. A firm 
shelf of rock only a few inches below his feet re- 
ceived him ; and with the morning light he went on 
his way rejoicing. Even so will it be when we have 
lived through the present crisis in the transformation 
of our beliefs. 

In the first moments of our alarm, our whole at- 
tention was concentrated upon the necessity of re- 
taining our old beliefs in the precise forms in which 
we had always held them ; and the characteristic 
of these that appeared to constitute their greatest 
strength was their isolation from the rest of our be- 
liefs, their peculiar and supernatural origin. The 
revelation contained in the Bible would, we thought, 



16 WHAT IS REALITY? 

lose all its prestige and authority over men unless 
it were held to be a communication from God differ- 
ent, not simply in degree, but absolutely different in 
kind, from all other communications. It seemed to 
us that the claim of inspiration v for the writers of 
the Bible would not be worth maintaining if it were 
to be classed with the inspirations of other great 
men. The belief in the Divinity of Christ would 
lose its most valuable significance were it not rigidly 
kept apart from the recognized indwelling of the 
Spirit in the Prophets. To associate it with the 
divine element that exists, latent or developed, in all 
men, was a supreme act of sacrilege. 

But ere long it began to appear that this special, 
infallible authority had not the hold upon reality 
that we had thought. Its attachments were continu- 
ally weakening while we were clinging to it for our 
lives. As our knowledge of all that men had thought 
and believed widened, other infallibilities ranged 
themselves alongside of ours. Other miracles asked 
for credence in support of other religions. And 
what was worse, it became certain, after a time, that 
the intelligent world was more and more withhold- 
ing its faith from all that part of its annals that 
recorded events antithetical to nature, and giving it 
increasingly to that which could prove its agreement 
with the order of nature. 

True, the world has not yet wholly abandoned the 
idea that the exceptional, the irregular, the marvel- 
ous event is to be regarded as the seal of truth. 
But belief does not grow in this direction ; and it 
cannot, because the whole order of thought in which 



INTRODUCTORY. 17 

it originated is passing away. In that order of 
thought, God was a Being who once upon a time 
created the world and remained separate from it. 
The order of nature was a uniform repetition ; but 
the Being who made it at times interfered with this 
order for the purpose of impressing himself upon the 
intelligent creatures who were a part of it. 

But in the new order of thought, God did not at a 
given time call into existence a complete and finished 
world. He has not dwelt apart from his world. 
But he works in it, constantly creating, constantly 
exhibiting new and wonderful products by means of 
new combinations and modifications. Yet, in this 
constantly growing world, nothing is absolutely 
new. Everything declares itself to be related to 
everything else. The test of reality therefore be- 
comes, not isolation, but connection. Whatever can 
show itself to be in the line of development has a 
higher claim on our credence than that which can- 
not. 

From henceforth we become not only willing, but 
eager, to surrender the claim of isolation for the 
events which have been the vouchers for our religious 
beliefs. We ransack history for relationships and 
analogies. We are as solicitous now for their adop- 
tion into the order of the world as we formerly were 
to assert their separateness from it. But, when this 
is accomplished, how are we situated? Are not 
our beliefs, thus harmonized with nature, trans- 
formed ? That depends upon what we make of na- 
ture. In short we come back to the fundamental 
question, — what is reality ? 



18 WHAT IS REALITY? 

But, it will be asked, what, in all this warfare of 
reason, has become of faith ? The answer is, that it 
holds the same position that it has always held. No 
matter how much we give ourselves to argumenta- 
tion, we can never dispense with that activity of the 
mind which we call faith. It is the faculty or func- 
tion of the soul whereby we grasp all general prin- 
ciples ; and were we to intermit the exercise of it, 
every kind of progress would forthwith come to an 
end. It is not a matter of less importance than it 
has been represented to be in our theological meth- 
ods, but a matter of far wider import. Faith in 
persons is not the only kind of faith. And whether 
it relates to persons or to principles, it is never the 
antithesis of reason. It is founded upon reason. 

If asked to define faith, I would say, it is the will 
to trust in and act on probabilities that have been 
rationally constructed from experience. All the 
higher truths of science rest upon just such proba- 
bilities. They have been first attained, and after 
that retained by the exercise of faith, just as much as 
the truths of religion have been. Every appeal to 
the law of continuity is an appeal to faith. That is, 
every time we are asked to accept a scientific gener- 
alization, we are asked to give our assent to a propo- 
sition that cannot be demonstrated, but that can be 
shown to rest on rational probabilities. Such an 
assent is a pure act of faith, and, at the same time, a 
wholly rational act. For, although the proposition 
to which the assent is given cannot be demonstrated, 
the probabilities upon which it rests can be shown 
to be rational probabilities. 



INTBOBUCTOBY. 19 



IV. 



The first step, then, toward the answer of our 
question will be to ascertain whether the experiences 
which underlie our belief in spirit as spirit are 
equally verifiable with the experiences from which 
science makes its deductions. If we find that they 
are, we shall be in a position to make the further in- 
quiry, Are the processes by which we ascend from 
our verified experiences to our hypothetical realities 
legitimate ? 

How, then, does science verify what we may call 
its mother realities ? 

In the earlier part of this chapter, when we were 
trying to find out the meaning of reality as related 
to the things of the external world, we had occasion 
to remark that the cause and cure of many of our 
illusions were to be found in the same conditions. 
In those cases where all or several of our senses 
contribute to our knowledge of a thing, the truth of 
a judgment concerning it, founded upon the testi- 
mony of one sense, may be sought by subjecting it 
to the judgment of another sense. This is the natu- 
ral, instinctive way of verification practiced alike 
by children, savages, and scientific men. But it is 
not the only way. 

We are acquainted not alone with the direct re- 
lations which things sustain to us, but also with a 
countless multiplicity of relations which they sustain: 
to each other ; and by the patient, exhaustive study 
of these the student of science is able to reach a 



20 WHAT IS REALITY? 

knowledge of the invariable characteristics of things 
that is far beyond anything that our direct know- 
ledge can supply. By repeated experiments he is 
able to get at the truth with regard to them, to hunt 
them from one hiding-place to another till he knows 
them thoroughly. 

At first he is baffled by a great variety of appa- 
rent variations in their behavior. But, suspecting 
that these variations are caused, not by any caprice 
in the element that he is investigating, but by the 
conditions to which it is subjected, he employs de- 
vices by which he is able to vary, to restrict, and to 
measure the conditions in a prolonged series of ex- 
periments, the results of which he carefully records. 
Thus he becomes possessed of a register of the possi- 
bilities and the impossibilities of things, — of their 
differences and also of their resemblances. The 
differences extend his knowledge, while the resem- 
blances add continually to its coherence. 

His realities thus assume the form, not of a heter- 
ogeneous assemblage of observations, but of a sys- 
tematized whole, the parts of which are mutually 
supporting. And we may say that his realities are 
substantiated by the convergent testimony of a great 
number of witnesses, the veracity of each one of 
which has been separately tried by every imaginable 
form of teasing and cross-questioning. 

Now what have we, corresponding to this, for the 
substantiation of our belief in spirit as spirit ? Can 
we, by following a method similar to the above, af- 
fix the stamp of absolute certainty to the affirma- 
tion that, when we think of the mind as a centre of 



INTRODUCTORY. 21 

efficiency, as an originating, causative entity, we are 
not the victims of an illusion, but are standing face 
to face with the inmost reality of the world ? 

I maintain that we can, — that we can prove the 
reality of spirit as spirit by the collation and com- 
parison of manifold experiences ; by testing these 
in a great variety of relations, noting differences and 
resemblances ; and by adhering to the result ob- 
tained when the constant uniform characteristics 
have been separated from the inconstant and occa- 
sional. 

Our starting-point is the assumption that the sub- 
jective world is a real world, that self-consciousness 
discourses to us about real things. This is a rational 
assumption, — an hypothesis, the very statement of 
which carries an immense amount of conviction with 
it. It is the equivalent of the general assumption 
with which the physical realist begins his quest, — 
the assumption that the external world is a real 
world, a world that discourses to us of real things. 
Both of these assumptions are foregone conclusions 
to the common sense of the race. They seem to need 
no proof or verification ; but, all the same, they ad- 
mit of it, each within the domain of its own sphere. 
I say within, for this is an absolute condition of 
verification in the one case as in the other. 

We are familiar with the claim, on the - part of 
those who occupy themselves with the problems of 
the external world, that the investigation of these 
problems must be carried on with purely physical 
factors, — that the supposition of spiritual efficiency 
at any point invalidates the process. Just so, in the 



22 WHAT IS REALITY? 

study of the phenomena of self-consciousness, we de- 
mand absolute freedom within the subjective sphere. 
We deprecate the intrusion of any belief or prin- 
ciple that has been formulated in the exclusive 
observation of the relations of things to each other 
in the external world. 

This is not the same as to say that we isolate our- 
selves, for the time, from all recognition of the out- 
side world of things. For we have to consider the 
testimony of self-consciousness with regard to the 
reactions of the ego upon that world. But we do 
limit ourselves to the consideration of the inside 
subjective aspects of such reactions, just as the ob- 
server of natural processes limits himself to the 
outside, objective aspects of the same phenomena. 

We have seen that illusions with regard to the 
things of the external world have their rise in hasty 
and therefore false judgments as to the range of 
their capabilities. A skillful imitation of a basket 
of fruit may lead us to infer in it the power of pro- 
ducing in us all those pleasurable sensations that 
are associated with the eating of fruit. We there- 
fore said, A thing of the external world is real 
vjhen it is capable of fulfilling the promises it makes 
to us. We may say the same with regard to the re- 
ports of self-consciousness. These are continually 
laying before us informations with regard to the 
states and capabilities of the ego. 

I am daily asked to believe certain things about 
myself, about my ability or inability to accomplish 
this, that, and the other desirable task. Some of 
these reports are true, some are false. For instance, 



INTRODUCTORY. 23 

when we see another exercising, apparently without 
effort, some acquired accomplishment, like public 
speaking, swimming, or horsemanship, we have to 
remind ourselves of the antecedent training, to over- 
come the illusion that we can at once do the same 
things without training. In the absence of expe- 
rience, that which is done easily by another is re- 
ported by self-consciousness as easy for us. This is 
a veritable illusion as to the capabilities of the ego. 
It is a mirage-like picture of its possibilities that can 
give pleasure only so long as no attempt at verifica- 
tion is made. 

Again, the ego is very prone to illusions with re- 
gard to the continuity of its own states. When un- 
der the influence of strong emotion, it seems to us as 
if the view of things presented to us while the emo- 
tion lasts would last forever. 

If plunged in deep grief by the loss of a friend, it 
seems certain to us that gladness can never visit our 
hearts again. The aspect of everything that sur- 
rounds us is so changed, and the ego that looks out 
upon the world is a being so radically different from 
the one we remember, that a return to the former 
self seems impossible. So, in times of great religious 
fervor, the mind is so lifted above its ordinary mood 
as to believe itself permanently and forever superior 
to all the enticements of the world. These beliefs 
are in almost every case illusions. The ego is not 
the changed personality that it takes itself to be. It 
has neither lost nor gained so much as it seems at 
such times to have done. 

We might enumerate many other sources and 



24 WHAT IS REALITY? 

kinds of subjective illusion, but this is enough for 
illustration's sake. We must go on to ask how we 
are to distinguish the true reports of consciousness 
with regard to the ego from the false. How else but 
by following the method that has proved so helpful 
with regard to the things of the outside world? 
That is, by subjecting to examination a great num- 
ber of experiences, eliminating the inconstant, occa- 
sional elements, and classifying those which declare 
themselves to be invariable. In other words, we 
must sort the affirmations of self-consciousness, and 
put by themselves, as representing reality, those 
which are constantly and in a great variety of rela- 
tions found to be true. 

But what shall we say to the objection that all the 
reports of self-consciousness are invalidated by its 
deceitfulness in so many cases ? Simply, that this 
assumption overlooks the fact that an illusion, with- 
out the existence of a corresponding reality, is an 
impossibility. As there can be no counterfeit coin 
except there be first a genuine one to imitate, so 
there can be no false pictures in the imagination the 
elements of which are not contributed by real, verified 
experiences. We affirm, then, that the illusions of 
self -consciousness must have their rise in the realities 
of self-consciousness. When, for instance, we have 
been deceived as to our ability to imitate the easily 
performed action of an expert, the deception is the 
outcome, not simply of the evidence before our eyes 
that another has accomplished it without apparent 
effort, but also of the certain knowledge that we 
have the ability to perform actions similar to the one 



INTB OB UCTOR Y. 25 

we have witnessed. We are not mistaken about the 
existence in us of powers of the same nature as those 
made use of by the expert. Our illusion, in other 
words, is a matter of details, not of essentials. 

In the same way the ego may, with regard to some 
particular case, greatly exaggerate its own moral 
power and responsibility. It may, when most sorely 
restricted by a depressed state of the nervous sys- 
tem, through which it must operate, conceive that it 
is able to do and ought to do certain things that are 
impossible to it. But this illusion is the certain evi- 
dence of a reality lying behind it, the reality of the 
power of moral choice, a reality that has been veri- 
fied in the oft-repeated normal experiences of the 
subject of the illusion. Again, our frequent errors 
with regard to the permanency of our emotional 
states are only mistaken inferences from the incon- 
testable fact of personal identity. 

But now, why do we call this an incontestable fact ? 
I wish to draw special attention to this point. We 
may, if we will, say that our personal identity is an 
ultimate datum of consciousness ; but if we do, let 
us not fail to recognize the fact that it is a datum not 
surrounded by any special mystery. It is a convic- 
tion that has grown up just in the same way that all 
our convictions about the reality of the things of the 
external world have grown up. It is the outcome 
of experience, — not of one experience, nor of the 
majority of experiences, but of all experiences. It 
is a factor in every conscious thought. It is the 
starting point of all reality. 

I do not mean to deny that the presence of the 



26 WHAT IS REALITY? 

living, abiding, initiating ego is more conspicuous in 
some relations than it is in others. Our conscious- 
ness of self varies greatly, not only in degree, but 
also in the characteristics that are brought to light 
by different activities. It is a many-sided being, 
with greatly diversified powers of manifestation ; 
and because it is so, we are able to apply to the 
study of it the same method that we pursue when in- 
vestigating the nature of the things of the external 
world. We are able, by reflection, to compare, not 
simply the results reached by many reactions of a 
similar nature, but also those reached by many dif- 
ferent classes of reactions, afforded by the very di- 
verse relations which it sustains to the world. 

Thus we should probably have no hesitation about 
referring our belief in the continuity of the ego to 
memory. Not to one act of memory, but to the ag- 
gregate of memories that extend back far into the 
past. Each conscious reaction of the ego is, from 
moment to moment, the certification to itself of its 
existence ; and memory, by the registration of these, 
is the abiding certification of its continuity and 
identity. The testimony of this extended series of 
experiences, each one of which corroborates the 
others, affords in itself a very strong justification 
for our belief in ourselves as real, persistent beings ; 
but the significance of it is greatly increased when 
we reflect upon the exceeding diversity of these ex- 
periences. 

Each one, it is true, testifies in the same way to 
the general fact of the existence and continuity of 
the ego; but the aggregate of experiences may be 



INTRODUCTOBY. 27 

divided into a number of different classes, each one 
of which has its own separate and independent story 
to tell. For instance, one great class is made up of 
the reactions of the ego which arise from its contact 
with other minds. Every such conscious reaction is, 
as I have said, an evidence to the ego of its continued 
existence ; but, in addition to this direct evidence, it 
receives, in the responses that come from others, a 
special and quite independent testimony to the truth 
of its home-made convictions. So accustomed are 
we to this corroboration of our identity that we 
should be filled with consternation were it suddenly 
withdrawn, — if, that is, we should all at once dis- 
cover that, while continuing to react freely upon our 
friends, seeing them and hearing them speak, we 
were unable to elicit any reaction from them that 
showed recognition of our presence. 

The same is true of the conviction that we are not 
mere links in a chain of mechanical sequences, but 
centres of originating power. This conviction may 
be called, as in the former case, an ultimate datum 
of consciousness ; but it is also a datum that is 
vouched for by innumerable experiences, — experi- 
ences not all of one kind, but of a great variety of 
kinds that corroborate each other. It is impossible 
for us to doubt our power to modify our own mental 
states, because we are constantly using that power. 
By the voluntary concentration of the attention, we 
turn the current of our thought and energy now in 
this direction, and now in that. 

But it is not alone in this direct way that our 
power of self-determination is known to us. We 



28 WHAT IS REALITY? 

have the strongest indirect evidence of it, — the 
evidence of contrast. It is a power that exists in 
degrees. Some men have ver} 7 " little of it ; and those 
who have it are conscious of possessing it in greater 
force at one time than at another. Its opposite, the 
inability to resist a tendency or current of thought 
that is in possession of the mind, is an equally dis- 
tinct experience. Our knowledge of defeat when 
we have made an unsuccessful attempt at self-deter- 
mination is, in other words, an indirect but very con- 
vincing proof of the reality of the other experience 
with which memory connects it. 

The illustration of this method might be extended 
indefinitely. But enough has been said to indicate 
the general course of our argument, — enough, per- 
haps, to make the reader suspect that our answer to 
the great question is to be a superficial one. It 
certainly has not the promise of profound wisdom 
that attaches to some other systems. It seems to 
ignore the efforts of the great masters of thought 
to penetrate by analysis to the unifying reality 
of the world. But it is not my purpose to ignore 
these systems. It will be the aim of the next two 
chapters to ascertain, as nearly as may be, the value 
of the answers they have given to our question. 



CHAPTEK II. 

THE ANSWER OF SUBJECTIVE ANALYSIS. 

I think we may take it for granted that every 
unsophisticated man is about equally certain of the 
truth of the following propositions : First, / exist. 
Second, There exists in time and space a world ex- 
ternal to myself. Third, I can produce changes in 
myself and in that external world. Fourth, Changes 
take place in me and in that world of which I am 
not the author. 

We may say, further, that the whole superstruc- 
ture of man's ordinary belief rests upon these four 
assumptions, and that speculative beliefs vary ac- 
cordingly as the emphasis of thought varies in rela- 
tion to them. When they are all treated as equally 
true, and when the development from each is equally 
full, we have a philosophy which may, without shame, 
call itself the philosophy of common sense. The 
realities of such a philosophy are the realities upon 
which every one acts ; they are the realities that have 
become established by the experience of generations 
of men in their every-day struggle for existence. 
The reverse of this is equally true. A philosophy 
that refuses belief to any one of these fundamental 
assumptions, or that develops one or more of them at 
the expense of the others, is removed thereby from 



30 WHAT IS REALITY? 

the sphere of common sense. The advocate of it has 
by some means obtained a view of the world that 
makes things appear to him in relations which are 
radically different from those that impress themselves 
upon ordinary minds. 

This consideration, which can hardly be challenged, 
might seem in itself to afford a sufficient answer to 
the question, What is reality? Is not that which 
everybody considers real thereby proved to be real ? 
Is not the long experience of the race decisive ? And 
is not any philosophy that departs from the consensus 
of human experience in the long run, by that very 
departure condemned? These questions might be 
answered with an unconditional affirmative but for 
one thing, namely, the existence of the rational fac- 
ulty in man. The mere circumstance that we are 
in the habit of regarding certain things as real, and 
that we find it convenient so to regard them, is not 
sufficient for this exacting faculty. Despising the 
test of practicability, reason urges upon us the ne- 
cessity of being logical and consistent. The convic- 
tions of common realism, it seems to say, are good 
enough for the direction of the material life in 
which they have been formed, but they are not good 
enough to reason by. Perhaps they are not finalities, 
not the ultimate things of existence. It may be that 
they are only the realities of convenience. 

This critical attitude may, at first sight, seem to be 
hypercritical. But it is not. For, immediately the 
light of reason is turned upon our common realism, 
it resolves itself into what seems to be an aggregate 
of heterogeneous convictions, — convictions that re- 



THE ANSWER OF SUBJECTIVE ANALYSIS. 31 

fuse to justify themselves as a logical deduction from 
any single assumption regarded as the basis of real- 
ity. They cannot be connected by the word there- 
fore. If we isolate them, they are individually 
unable to give an account of themselves. And, 
worse yet, their testimony is conflicting. The dog- 
matism of one, when followed to its conclusions, 
seems to contradict that of another ; and if the self- 
conscious, critical reason accepts their dictation, it 
does this, not because it is logically convinced, but 
simply because it cannot get along without them. 

Let us see how some of these contradictions are 
related to our four fundamental assumptions. The 
two propositions, "I exist," and "There exists a 
world external to myself," although united in experi- 
ence, stand off from each other as soon as analysis 
touches them. The first, which we must regard as 
the very foundation of reality, seems to gather every- 
thing into itself. It refuses to be cognizant of, or in 
any way responsible for, the other. I am directly 
conscious of myself and of my own thoughts, it 
affirms, but of aught else it is impossible that I 
should know anything. I am conscious of a world 
of appearances, of phenomena, apparently external 
to myself, that are related in specific ways to me and 
to each other. But I have, and can have, no evi- 
dence whatever of their existence outside my own 
mind. As ideas they are real to me ; but that they 
have any other kind of reality is a pure assumption. 
The whole notion of externality may be an illusion. 
This possibility tends to transform itself into a cer- 
tainty when we go on to the third and fourth assump- 



32 WHAT IS REALITY? 

tions of commoD realism. For here we encounter 
another contradiction. The proposition, " I can pro- 
duce changes in myself and in the world external to 
myself," directly affirms a kind of causation that is 
not only ignored, but is even pronounced to be im- 
possible, by the development of the proposition, 
" Changes take place in me and in the external 
world of which I am not the author." 

In the infancy of reason, no conflict between these 
two affirmations was apparent, because the unin- 
structed imagination had as yet conceived of no 
other kind of causation than that of which the mind 
was conscious in itself. It readily, therefore, ex- 
plained all changes, not originated by itself, by a 
reference to other beings, more or less resembling 
self. But the increase of experience, and the habit 
of analyzing it, early compelled the recognition of 
that which we call physical causation. Science has 
classified and organized our knowledge of this. It 
has arrived at great generalizations which it calls 
laws of nature. These laws of nature, in their 
all-extensiveness, seem also to be all-comprehensive. 
And as all-comprehensive, they exclude the possibil- 
ity of any such kind of causation as that which the 
third proposition affirms. The study of the external 
world, it is said, has established the fact that every 
event in it is fully accounted for by its physical ante- 
cedents ; there cannot, therefore, be any such thing 
as spiritual or mental causation. The conviction 
that there is must be an illusion. 

The replies that may be given to this from the 
standpoint of the first and third propositions need 






THE ANSWER OF SUBJECTIVE ANALYSIS. 33 

not be considered here. It is sufficient for our pres- 
ent purpose to have briefly illustrated the fact of 
apparent contradiction between the different mem- 
bers of our common realism ; and we may go on to 
consider whether philosophy is able to do anything 
toward extricating reason from this predicament. 

Kant, who formulates four contradictions arising 
from our natural beliefs, introduces a statement of 
them in the following words : — 

" Here a new phenomenon of human reason meets 
us, — a perfectly natural antithetic, which does not 
require to be sought for by subtle sophistry, but into 
which reason of itself unavoidably falls. It is thereby 
preserved, to be sure, from the slumber of a fancied 
conviction which a merely one-sided illusion pro- 
duces. But it is at the same time compelled, on the 
one hand, to abandon itself to a despairing skepti- 
cism, or, on the other, to assume a dogmatic confi- 
dence and obstinate persistence in certain assertions 
without granting a fair hearing to the other side of 
the question. Either is the death of a sound philo- 
sophy." * If this were absolutely true, a continuance 
of our quest would be unnecessary. For if a legiti- 
mate use of the reason narrows us down to such a 
dilemma, has it not thereby demonstrated the useless- 
ness of reason as a guide to reality ? 

Kant sought for an explanation of this recoil of 
reason upon itself, and believed that he found it in 
the assumption that all the phenomena with which 
the human mind deals are unreal. Behind the phe- 
nomena of the external world lurks the undiscovered 

1 Critique of Pure Reason, p. 255, Bohn's ed. 



34 WHAT IS REALITY 1 

and undiscoverable thing-in-itself, the real thing', 
which is necessarily unlike anything that we know. 
And, again, behind the subjective phenomena of 
mind lies an equally unknown and unknowable 
thing-in-itself, which is also unlike any or all of the 
manifestations that it makes of itself. That these 
two unknowns may in reality be one is, for aught 
we know, possible, but not verifiable. The pheno- 
mena suggest to us a duality. Hence the contradic- 
tions of reason. Its deductions appear to be mutu- 
ally destructive because we are never free from the 
false assumption that we are dealing with real things. 
Let us once recognize the fact that phenomena are 
only the appearances of things, — real as related to 
our minds, but as related to the absolutely real, illu- 
sions, — and we are no longer at a loss to account 
for the mockeries of reason. 

This brings us to a satisfactory conclusion in some 
respects. It enables us to believe that things may 
be rational in themselves, that is, capable of being 
rationally apprehended by a mind that can know 
them as real. It also vindicates reason by shifting 
all the blame of its contrarieties on to the false 
appearances with which it is doomed to deal. But 
since human reason and reality are absolutely shut 
out from each other, we are left badly off by this ex- 
planation. The abstraction which we call the thing- 
in-itself and that other abstraction which we call our 
reason have been hypothetically saved at our ex- 
pense, and we are forced to abandon ourselves to a 
" despairing skepticism." 

It is just this fruit that the philosophy of Kant 



THE ANSWER OF SUBJECTIVE ANALYSIS. 35 

has borne in those of his followers who have consis- 
tently held to the argument of the " Critique of the 
Pure Eeason." The schools of Albert Lange and 
Schopenhauer were the direct outcome of it ; and 
every kind of skepticism since Kant's day has re- 
ferred itself to his demonstration of the unreality of 
phenomena. There is, it is true, another side to 
Kant. He did not intend that skepticism should be 
the fruit of his philosophy ; and in view of his " Cri- 
tique of the Practical Reason," we may believe Dr. 
Pfleiderer when he says that the task which Kant 
set before him was that of finding some means of 
reconciling the functions of the practical and the 
theoretical reason, which must be, in the last resort, 
one, — of reconciling, that is, that which is neces- 
sary and beneficent in practice with that which is 
theoretically true in knowledge. 1 

But so thorough had been the first, destructive 
part of Kant's work, so completely had he persuaded 
his followers that illusion and nothing but illusion 
constitutes the mental atmosphere in which we live 
and move and have our being, that little heed was 
given to his constructive work. It seemed like an 
after-thought, prompted by interest and not by phi- 
losophy. It was this view of the case that provoked 
Heine's bantering question, " Did Kant undertake 
this resuscitation, not merely on account of old 
Lampe (Kant's servant who needed a God), but also 
on account of the police ? Or did he really act from 
conviction?" 

Anyhow, the fragment of reality that Kant sought 

1 The Philosophy of Religion, vol. i. p. 178. 



36 WHAT IS BEALITYt 

to rescue from the general ruin wrought by his criti- 
cism was not broad enough to inspire confidence. 
If everything but this was illusion, was not this illu- 
sion also ? He might demonstrate a radical differ- 
ence between the moral imperative and all other 
movements of the mind ; but at the end of the argu- 
ment, reflection infallibly returned to the considera- 
tion that this moral imperative manifests itself in 
the same mind that has already been proved to be 
the fountain-head of illusions. In short, Kant in his 
" Practical Reason " seems to be chargeable with 
that very dogmatism which, from the standpoint of 
pure reason, he declared to be the only alternative 
to a despairing skepticism and the death of a sound 
philosophy. Certain it is that his constructive fol- 
lowers, no less than the skeptical ones, refused to be 
satisfied with the ground of reality thus provided. 

But none the less did this philosophy prove a 
great stimulus to system-building. One eminent 
thinker after another believed he saw the possibility 
of erecting, on the ground that Kant had cleared, a 
structure of positive thought that from its unity 
should be impregnable. It is not difficult to under- 
stand why this should have been the case. Aside 
from the natural reaction which a work of such 
wholesale demolition would produce, Kant's critique 
had laid bare novel aspects of thought which seemed 
capable of being turned from negative to positive 
uses. And, on the other hand, his doctrine of the 
unreality of phenomena was always at hand to banish 
to the limbo of illusions whatever could not be as- 
similated. How these constructive successors of the 



THE ANSWER OF SUBJECTIVE ANALYSIS. 37 

great philosopher sought to obtain a broader basis 
for their philosophy, in the realm that he had aban- 
doned to illusion, is the matter of special interest to 
us. How will they escape the choice of irrational 
dogmatism or hopeless skepticism ? 

Clearly there is no escape unless they repudiate 
altogether the underlying assumption of Kant's al- 
ternative, — the assumption that the propositions of. 
common realism are equally self - consistent and 
equally well grounded in the necessities of thought. 
This in effect they do. They hold that the same 
analysis that has revealed the contrariety of the prop- 
ositions puts us in a position to separate that which 
is true from that which is false. By it we may pen- 
etrate to an ultimate principle from which it is pos- 
sible to build up an harmonious whole, excluding, as 
we go, all those unreal elements that have inter- 
woven themselves in common thought. 

This method, not only in the past, but also in con- 
temporary thought, has given rise to imposing 
schemes for the determination and unification of the 
real. Whatever its defects may be, therefore, it is 
certain that it has had a great fascination for minds 
of constructive tendencies, and that it has been po- 
tent to inspire great thinkers with great dreams and 
great expectations. Nor is the assumption underly- 
ing these expectations peculiar to a particular class 
of minds. The belief, or rather the feeling, that 
analysis ought, in every instance, to enable us to 
separate the true from the false in our conceptions, 
that it ought to carry us down to a solid substratum 
of simple, pure reality, from which to rear the tern- 



38 WHAT IS REALITY t 

pie of truth without flaw, may be said to be univer- 
sal. It is based upon so many analogies drawn from 
common experience that we accept it as a foregone 
conclusion. Let us see what kind of answers it has 
been able to furnish to our question. 

A most significant fact confronts us at the very 
threshold of the history of the analytic method, 
■ namely, that its use for the discovery of the central 
point of philosophical development has divided its 
advocates into hostile factions, and that each of 
these factions has found in our common experience 
an unquestionably sure foundation to build upon. 
The complex faith by which we live, the moment we 
begin to question it, points out, as we have seen, two 
quite distinct sources of knowledge as its justifica- 
tion. Our knowledge of the external world of things 
is one of these ; our knowledge of the internal sub- 
jective world of the ego is the other. And these 
two realms of experience stand facing each other in 
the imagination as rivals. 

The champion of subjective reality takes his stand 
upon the directness and immediateness of our know- 
ledge of mental states. He emphasizes that element 
of experience which says " I think," or " I exist 
thinking." The one thing of which we are at once 
and absolutely certain, he urges, is consciousness. 
Therefore it is by the analysis of conscious mental 
processes alone that we can hope to reach that point 
from which we may develop our knowledge as a con- 
sistent organic whole, and formulate a principle 
whose absoluteness will purge our common experi- 
ence of every false element. 



THE ANSWER OF SUBJECTIVE ANALYSIS. 39 

On the other hand, the philosopher who draws his 
ultimate reality from the external world of things 
appeals first of all to common sense. He denies the 
priority and directness of self-conscious knowledge. 
The results which it reaches are, he affirms, less di- 
rect and intuitive than those which dawn upon the 
opening mind of the child. They are far-fetched. 
They are reached only after a long, roundabout pro- 
cess ; and the very length of this process casts suspi- 
cion upon them. When, therefore, they conflict with 
our knowledge of the external world, they must be 
set down as illusions. 

I think we may say that Hegel on the one hand, 
and Herbert Spencer on the other, represent most 
definitely, at least for English thought, these diver- 
gent applications of the analytic method. A brief 
examination of the results reached by them will, 
therefore, give us some insight into what analysis 
and abstraction can do for us. Hegel was preceded 
by Fichte in an attempt to build up a constructive 
system on the basis of the Kantian criticism. 1 Fichte 
starts in with the assumption that no philosophy is 
worthy of the name that is not a true deduction from 
a siDgle principle that represents reality. Philoso- 
phy, if it is to be philosophy at all, must be " in one 
piece." To find such a principle, he brushes away 
Kant's doctrine of the unknown thing-in-itself. The 
thing that we know is, for constructive thought, the 
thing-in-itself. 

1 In -what f olhnvs with regard to Fichte and Hegel I have availed 
ray self of the abstracts found in Professor Adamson's Fichte, in 
Professor Caird's Hegel, and in Professor Andrew Seth's particu- 
larly helpful book. Hegelianism and Personality. 



40 WHAT IS BEALITY? 

There are, Fichte affirms, only two possible sys- 
tems of philosophy, and between these we must 
choose. The one which he does not choose he calls 
dogmatism. It is that one which starts with the 
assumption of the independent reality of the things 
of the external world. Those who make this postu- 
late deliver themselves over to the domination of me- 
chanical conceptions. To them the determinations 
of the physical world are the all-in-all of reality. 
The inevitable result of this system, therefore, is to 
reduce mind to the level of matter. It becomes a 
thing among things, an accident of the world ; and 
the belief in its free activity must be reckoned an 
illusion. The other system, the one which he chooses, 
he calls sometimes Criticism, sometimes Idealism. 

The whole development of this is within the realm 
of the ego. Here all things have their origin and 
existence. The reasons for his choice of this system 
are its absoluteness and its comprehensiveness. The 
existence of the self-conscious ego is not, like the ex- 
istence of things, a more or less probable hypothesis, 
but an ever-present fact of our own experience. It 
is the Absolute Thesis, the one undoubted reality of 
the world. Further, as a principle for philosophical 
development, it contains within itself all the elements 
of reality. The ego is not a mere fact that exists as 
the' dogmatist conceives a " thing" to exist; it is ex- 
istence and knowledge of existence in one. It is at 
the same time both subject and object. It is for it- 
self. It looks on at its own existence ; whereas the 
very notion of a thing is that it does not exist for 
itself, but only for another, — that is, for some intel- 



THE ANSWER OF SUBJECTIVE ANALYSIS. 41 

ligence. " In intelligence, accordingly," says Fichte, 
" there is, if I may express myself metaphorically, a 
double series of being and looking on, of the real 
and the ideal. The thing, on the other hand, repre- 
sents only a single or simple series, that of the real, 
— mere position or objective existence." 1 If, there- 
fore, we start with the independent existence of the 
thing, there is no bridge by which we may pass to 
the idea of the conscious subject. We must, there- 
fore, accept the ego, with its subjective and objective 
sides, as the ultimate, world-constituting fact. 

Developing from this basis of reality, Fichte and 
Hegel built up, each in his own way, imposing worlds 
of thought, that within the limit of the subjective 
sphere had coherence and logical consistency. But 
our question with regard to their work must be, 
Have they by their idealism produced an harmonious 
whole that incorporates, without discord, all the ele- 
ments of reality? Or have they simply traced out 
the relations of one side of our knowledge while 
turning their backs on the other ? We have found 
Fichte condemning the physical realists or dogma- 
tists, because their realities were isolated by an im- 
passable gulf from the realities of the subjective 
world. Every attempt, he affirms, to bridge this 
chasm turns out to be "a few empty words which 
may, indeed, be learned by heart and repeated, but 
which have never conveyed a thought to any man, 
and never will." 

Now does he, we at once ask, hold that the reverse 
process is any less impracticable ? Can we cross 

1 Hegelianism and Personality, p. 43. 



42 WHAT IS REALITY? 

from ideas to things any easier than from things to 
ideas ? On the contrary, having found a satisfactory 
basis for reality in the ego, he not only ignores the 
bridge but the chasm also. There is no chasm, be- 
cause there is no other side. In the doubleness of 
the ego he has discovered both sides. There is no 
other world, and in this one there is no real, but only 
an apparent, lack of harmony. All the oppositions 
of thought contained in the ideas, mind and matter, 
necessity and freedom, have their origin in this dual- 
ity of the ego, and within the realm of the ego they 
find also their reconciliation. They are seen to be 
only different aspects of the several stages in and 
through which the spiritual order is realized. 

Hegel treats the problem differently. He is not 
satisfied,- like Fichte, to leave his system in the air, 
unconnected with the facts of nature and history. 
These, he essays to show, are the outcome of ideas. 
That is, he believes himself able to cross that chasm 
which Fichte declared to be impassable to one taking 
his stand on the reality of things. Does he succeed ? 
Or does his attempt turn out, as Fichte says every 
attempt to cross from things to ideas has turned out 
to be, only " a few empty words, which may, indeed, 
be learned by heart and repeated, but which have 
never conveyed a thought to any man, and never 
will " ? Let us see what stuff his bridge is made of. 

The Absolute Idea, according to Hegel, is, in the 
realm of thought or logic, the counterpart of Abso- 
lute Spirit in the realm of real existence. Before 
the Absolute Idea passes over into Absolute Spirit 
and nature, it is, we are told, " still logical, still con- 



THE ANSWER OF SUBJECTIVE ANALYSIS. 43 

fined to the element of pure thoughts. . . . But in- 
asmuch as the pure idea of knowledge is thus, so far, 
shut up in a species of subjectivity, it is impelled to 
remove this limitation ; and thus the pure truth, the 
last result of the Logic, becomes also the beginning 
of another sphere and science." The Idea, in other 
words, by a determination of itself becomes Nature. 
But this determination of itself is not a process of 
becoming or of transition from stage to stage, as in 
the Logic. " The passing over," he says, " is rather 
to be understood thus, — that the idea freely lets 
itself go, being absolutely sure of itself and at rest 
in itself. On account of this freedom, the form 
of its determination is likewise absolutely free, — 
namely, the externality of space and time existing 
absolutely for itself without subjectivity." And 
again : " The Idea which exists for itself, looked at 
from the point of view of this unity with itself, is 
Perception ; and the idea as it exists for perception 
is Nature. . . . The absolute freedom of the idea 
consists in this, that in the absolute truth of itself it 
resolves to let the element of its particularity — the 
immediate idea as its own reflection — go forth freely 
from itself as Nature." 1 

" What," asks Professor Seth, " are we to say of 
the deliberate attempt made in these passages to 
deduce Nature from the logical Idea? Simply, I 
think, that there is no real deduction in the case. 
The phrases used are metaphors which, in the cir- 
cumstances, convey no meaning whatever. As Schel- 
ling afterwards said, they merely indicate a resolute 
1 Hegelianism and Personality, pp. 105, 106. 



44 WHAT IS REALITY f 

leap on Hegel's part across the ugly broad ditch 
which dialectic is powerless to bridge." 1 

But ineffectual as this effort must be deemed, it 
exhibits the advance that Hegel had made upon 
Fichte in his understanding of the true problem to 
be solved. Fichte, as we have seen, was contented 
to rest in his idealism. Philosophy, in his view, has 
no sphere outside the realm of the conscious ego. It 
cannot be applied to the problems of actual life. It 
and popular thinking move on different platforms ; 
so that the gravest errors in speculation arise from 
the transference of considerations which are relevant 
in one of them into the other where they are absolute 
absurdities. " Life," as he puts it, " is non-philoso- 
phizing, and philosophy is non-living." His attitude 
to common realism is distinctly expressed in the fol- 
lowing passage : " What arises through knowledge 
and out of knowledge is only a knowing. But all 
knowing is only representation or picture, and there 
always arises the demand for something which shall 
correspond to the picture. This demand no know- 
ledge can satisfy. . . . But at least, the reality 
whose slave thou f earedst to be — the reality of an 
independent, sensible world — has vanished. For 
this whole sensible world arises only through know- 
ledge, and is itself part of our knowledge. . . . This 
is the sole merit of which I boast in the system which 
we have but now discovered together. It destroys 
and annihilates error ; truth it cannot give, because 
in itself it is absolutely empty." 2 

1 Hegelianism and Personality, p. 107. 
• 2 xud., p. 145. 



THE ANSWER OF SUBJECTIVE ANALYSIS. 4:5 

This is a clear confession that his philosophy " in 
one piece " is nothing more than a fragment, and 
that the contradictions of common realism are not 
met and harmonized, but only evaded, when he sub- 
stitutes for them the purely formal contradictions of 
the subject-object ego. 

The reconciliations of Hegel are effected in the 
same manner. They all take place in the subjective 
sphere of formal thought. But he felt, as Fichte 
did not, the necessity of somehow including in his 
system the realities of actual life and nature. He 
held that his philosophy, even though it might not 
be altogether brought down to the plane of common 
sense, must at least " gain a clear conscience toward 
common sense by fulfilling all its reasonable demands, 
and leaving it no excuse to deny the rationality of 
that which transcended it. Especially, he declared, 
must such a philosophy be ready to meet on its own 
ground that higher kind of common sense called sci- 
ence ; it must be scientific, even if it is necessary for 
it to be something more." 1 

This we hold to be the true statement of the case. 
But if Hegel was in advance of Fichte in his com- 
prehension of the problem to be solved, Fichte had 
a truer insight into the limitations of the method 
employed. The chasm is as impassable from the one 
side as from the other. There is no real unification 
of the discordant elements of common realism possi- 
ble by such a method ; and as related to this prob- 
lem we must say that neither of these great philoso- 
phers have escaped Kant's dilemma. They have 

1 Hegel by Edward Caird, LL D., p. 130. 



46 WBAT IB REALITY 1 

refused skepticism, tliey have embraced dogmatism. 
Their systems are dogmatic, because they fail to jus* 
tify their discrimination between the elements of 
common realism. The only possible proof that this 
discrimination was the result of a rational and not 
of an arbitrary choice lay in their ability to rein- 
corporate all those elements that they provisionally 
neglected when selecting their single principle as a 
foundation* This they failed to do* The fragment 
which they abstracted from the concrete reality of 
experience remained a fragment. It led to no devel* 
opment other than that of putting together again the 
parts of this larger part after they had analyzed it. 

And let us carefully observe here that the most real 
element with which they deal is not the final result 
of a prolonged analytic process. It is the part, still 
concrete^ that they, at the very beginning of the 
process, have severed from the concrete whole. 

This is acknowledged both by Fichte and by 
Hegel. The former thus describes what he regards 
as the solid ground of reality on which he builds i 
" There is something in me which impels to absolute, 
independent, self-originated activity. ... I ascribe 
to myself the power of forming an idea or plan, and 
likewise the power, through a real action, of embody- 
ing this idea beyond the world of ideas. I ascribe 
to myself, in other words, a real active force, — a 
force which produces being, and which is quite dif- 
ferent from the mere faculty of ideas. . . . Here 
lies the point to which the consciousness of all real- 
ity is attached. This point is the real activity of 
my idea, and the real power of action which I am 



m% ANSWEM OF SUBJECTIVE ANALYSIS. 47 

obliged, in consequence, to attribute to myself. 
However it may be with the reality of a sensible 
world external to me, I myself am real ; I take hold 
on reality here," 1 Now this reality of Fichte is an 
exceedingly concrete reality < It is, so to speak, a 
solid block of experience quarried from actual life. 
It is, in substance, the first and second of our prop- 
ositions of common realism* " I exist," Fichte says ; 
and though he will have nothing to say about the 
reality of a sensible world external to himself, he 
does ascribe to himself the power of making plans 
and embodying them " beyond the world of ideas." 
This is no less than to affirm our second proposi- 
tion, "I can produce changes in my self and in the 
external world." 

It is the same with HegeL The self-conscious 
knower is treated by him as the ultimate fact to 
which all other facts are relative, and in which they 
find their explanation. This is the point from which 
his analysis sets out^ and it is also the point to 
which it returns, and beyond which it cannot get. 
As Professor Seth remarks : " He presents every* 
thing synthetically, though it must first have been 
got analytically, by an ordinary process of reflec- 
tion upon the facts which are the common property 
of every thinker* „ . . The very abstraction of 
4 Being ' with which the method starts is the start- 
ing-point merely because it is the baldest abstraction 
that we can make from the complex fullness of actu- 
ality. . . . The forward movement (from this ab- 
straction) is in reality a progress backwards : it is a 

1 Hegelianism and Personality, p, 146^ 



48 WHAT IS REALITY? 

retracing of our steps to the world as we know it in 
the fullness of its real determinations." 

All that the analysis does, therefore, is to disclose 
to us realities of a subordinate, inferior type ; reali- 
ties that are less and less comprehensive, more and 
more abstract. Hegel, in a measure, recognizes this. 
And the great merit of his system, to which we shall 
have occasion to recur, is its true classification of 
the categories of thought according to their worth ; 
making the higher and more comprehensive the ex- 
planation of the lower and more extensive. That 
a contrary impression — the impression of a real 
development — has been produced by his imposing 
progress of the categories is owing, first, to the fact 
that he exhibits only the constructive side of his 
work, and second, to the glamour exerted over his 
own mind by the appearance of constructing some- 
thing over and above that which was given in analy- 
sis. It was his ambition to furnish the world with 
an absolute, all-embracing philosophy. And this 
ambition carried him past the bounds of sober judg- 
ment. 

Now let us sum up the net result of our inquiry 
thus far. It is purely negative. We have only 
reached this, — that no satisfactory answer to our 
question can be given by subjective analysis. All 
its promises of a reconciliation between the contra- 
dictory elements of common realism by reference to 
a single principle have turned out to be illusory. 
The results reached at the end of the process do not 
tally with the required results. They are not, in 
short, realities. 



THE ANSWER OF SUBJECTIVE ANALYSIS. 49 

Common sense cannot, by any twisting or turning, 
divest itself of the fact of the independent and often 
coercive reality of the things of the external world. 
It divides the pictures of the mind into two classes 
that are absolutely different from each other. To 
the one class belong those that can, so to speak, be 
thought away, those that are subject to the control 
of the ego, that present no external obstacle to action. 
To the other class belong those that are not under 
the control of the ego, that cannot be thought away, 
that oppose obstacles to action. These two classes 
are as different from each other as light is different 
from darkness, as positive is different from negative, 
as a solid is different from a vacuum. But of these 
two classes the purely subjective philosophy makes 
one, by the simple process of dogmatically denying 
that there is any fundamental difference between the 
two. If, therefore, it is still permitted to hope that 
analysis can furnish the key for a rational and har- 
monious development of all our knowledge from a 
single principle, we must look elsewhere. We must 
turn to that other realm, — the realm of real things 
that science has made its own. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE ANSWER OF OBJECTIVE ANALYSIS. 

A PHILOSOPHY that finds its ultimate reality in 
the things of the external world has a great advan- 
tage over any system of Idealism in that it is easily 
comprehended. It uses the word real in the ordi- 
nary sense to designate the things that we see and 
handle and contend with, — things whose reality is 
daily forced upon our attention by the necessities of 
conduct. The doctrines of idealism, on the other 
hand, seem to the man of affairs the purest moon- 
shine, — the willful contradiction of the absolute 
certainties of common sense and experience. Sim- 
ply as the antithesis of such a philosophy, therefore, 
physical realism finds favor; and by its frequent 
appeals to common sense easily produces the impres- 
sion that it is never at war with it. 

In addition to this, physical realism deals with the 
things that engage the attention of science, and 
ostensibly grounds itself on its demonstrations. 
Hence, all the prestige and halo of wonderful 
achievement that has gathered round the latter is 
reflected on the former ; and there is thus secured 
for it a strong hold upon the imagination, a vantage- 
ground of enthusiasm, from whence it fairly brow- 
beats criticism. For what can stand before that 



THE ANSWER OF OBJECTIVE ANALYSIS. 51 

science which, in the last two centuries, has made 
such conquests ? Has it not proved itself the great 
revolutionizer ? Has it not analyzed our finalities ? 
reorganized our conceptions of the relations of things 
to each other? bound together our scattered frag- 
ments of knowledge by the discovery of principles of 
universal application ? In short, has it not proved 
itself the organ of progressive understanding in 
every direction ? 

The inference drawn by the physical realist from 
these considerations is that the one and only road 
to knowledge is that which leads through the inves- 
tigation of external phenomena ; and that all other 
knowledge, being more or less mixed with illusion, 
is untrustworthy. Such knowledge may be true, but 
it must remain open to suspicion till rectified by the 
laws that science has discovered. Submitting to 
these laws we are safe, for they admit of proof. 
They can be demonstrated by numberless experi- 
ments. There is no variability, no uncertainty about 
their testimony. They say the same things to all" 
men, and what they say to-day they will say to-mor- 
row. "When, therefore, these laws are shown to be 
the contradiction of any of our time-honored beliefs, 
there is only one course to be pursued. The ancient 
belief must abdicate, — it must take the path trav- 
eled, in these later days, by a host of shadowy forms 
that once lorded it over human reason. 

But we must to our task. We have to discover 
whether this philosophy can give us a satisfactory 
answer to the main question, " What is Reality ? " 
I have chosen the " Synthetic Philosophy " of Mr, 



52 WHAT 18 REALITY f 

Herbert Spencer as the basis of our investigation, 
because it has seemed to me to be the most syste- 
matic and the most thoroughly reasoned of its class ; 
and also because the real bearing of this widely read 
and much admired philosophy, as related to our 
higher belief s, is often misapprehended by those who 
defend it. It is believed by some that, with a few 
slight alterations, it may be turned into a powerful 
defense of theism. But, if I am not greatly mis- 
taken, it is, in its very essence, the contradiction of 
theism, — the substitution of a mechanical interpre- 
tation of the universe for a spiritual one. 

Mr. Spence/s conception of the true philosophic 
method closely resembles that of the great idealist 
Fichte. The latter, as we have seen, held that phi- 
losophy, to be philosophy at all, must be in one piece* 
Its explanation must be a deduction of the apparently 
disparate elements of existence from a single princi- 
ple. So also Mr. Spencer. He sets before him as the 
goal of his philosophizing the complete unification of 
our experience. He divides knowledge into three 
classes. " Knowledge of the lowest kind is ununified 
knowledge ; science is partially-unified knowledge ; 
philosophy is completely-unified knowledge. It is the 
final product of that process which begins with a 
mere colligation of crude observations, goes on estab- 
lishing propositions that are broader and more sepa- 
rated from particular cases, and ends in universal 
propositions.' ' 1 These universal propositions have 
to be traced back to one ultimate principle that un- 
derlies them all ; a principle' that, as coextensive 

1 First Principles, see. 37. 



THE ANSWER OF OBJECTIVE ANALYSIS. 53 

with ali experience, can be used for the reconcile- 
ment of all experience. This principle being found, 
the synthetic part of the philosophy consists in the 
deduction of all our knowledge from this one princi- 
ple, and the demonstration of the congruity of all 
our justifiable beliefs with it and with each other. 

Three primary truths of universal validity are 
said to have been established by science, " The In- 
destructibility of Matter, the Continuity of Motion, 
the Persistence of Force?' 1 The last mentioned of 
these differs from the others in that it is ultimate, 
while they are derivative, This, the widest of all 
truths, is ultimate, because it can neither be merged 
in nor derived from any other, " The sole truth 
which transcends experience by underlying it is thus 
the Persistence of Force. This being the basis of 
experience must be the basis of any scientific organ- 
ization of experiences. To this an ultimate analysis 
brings us down ; and on this a rational synthesis 
must build up." 

The reader will not fail to recognize the impor- 
tance of the above assumption. If the doctrine of the 
persistence of force is " the sole truth that transcends 
experience by underlying it," if " asserting the per- 
sistence of force is asserting an unconditioned real- 
ity," if this reality is ultimate in the sense that all 
other beliefs can be referred to it as the touchstone 
of reality, if, in a word, it is ^-comprehensive as 
well as all-extensive, then Mr. Spencer's philosophy 

1 "This phrase was introduced by Herbert Spencer to sum up 
ali the laws of mechanics, especially the two principles of tbe per- 
manence of matter and the conservation of energy." — The Century 
Dictionary. 



54 WHAT IS BEALITY? 

stands. But to attain this result it is not sufficient 
to have established the truth and universality of the 
principle. It is not sufficient to have shown that 
the postulates upon which it rests are equally well 
grounded with those from which idealism takes its 
departure. In order to be accepted as the ultimate 
principle of our knowledge, the absolute test that 
can turn all other beliefs, no matter how deeply in- 
trenched, summarily out of court, something more is 
required. It is necessary that its superiority of pre- 
rogative should be proved. Other realities, hitherto 
universally regarded as ultimate, cannot give way to 
this one unless the higher warrant is satisfactorily 
established. 

Mr. Spencer at one stage of his argument recog- 
nizes this necessity, and resolutely engages the ideal- 
ist with deadly intent. It is unnecessary to say that 
the result is a triumphant exhibition of his antago- 
nist as a mildly insane person who, by a course of 
sophistical reasoning, has completely inverted the 
true order of knowledge. But it will be for us to 
inquire to what extent he has substantiated his own 
claim to a superior rationality. Before entering upon 
this, however, it will be useful for us to consider 
briefly the results to which the Synthetic Philosophy 
carries us, and the nature of the conflict between 
these results and the realities of subjective expe- 
rience. 

Mr. Spencer somewhere tells us that " there is no 
mode of establishing the validity of any belief, ex- 
cept that of showing its congruity with all other be- 
liefs." By this he means all beliefs that in the final 



THE ANSWER OF OBJECTIVE ANALYSIS. 55 

adjudication are pronounced to be justifiable. But 
in the course of his unification he finds it necessary 
to prove that some of our most deeply rooted beliefs 
are nothing more than " inveterate illusions." This 
necessity of cutting off from the organized body of 
our conceptions elements that seem to be vital parts 
of it must be a painful one to a philosopher who 
has addressed himself to the task of developing all 
our experience from a single principle. These ele- 
ments would certainly never be excluded if they 
could be retained. For a just appreciation of Mr. 
Spencer's work, therefore, we must give our atten- 
tion to his demonstration of this necessity. It need 
not delay us long, for it admits of a simple state- 
ment. 

The beliefs to be excluded may be summed up in 
the following single proposition : Mental causation, 
as distinct from physical causation, is a reality. 
This proposition is said to be false, because it is the 
contradiction of the ultimate test of all reality. To 
use Mr. Spencer's words, "The law of the persistence 
of force really amounts to this, that there cannot 
be an isolated force beginning and ending in no- 
thing ; but that any force manifested implies an 
equal antecedent force from which it is derived, and 
against which it is a reaction. Further, that the 
force so originating cannot disappear without result ; 
but must expend itself in some other manifestation 
of force, which in being produced becomes its reac- 
tion ; and so on continually." 1 This is the bare 
statement of the law. To make an intelligible ap- 
1 First Principles, sec. 59. 



56 WHAT IS REALITF? 

plication of it to the phenomena of ordinary experi- 
ence, we have to fill out the conception with the law 
of the transformation and equivalence of forces. 

What we seem to see in the world about us is a 
multiplicity of forces which have no community of 
nature. But science reveals to us the fact that these 
are all different forms of one persisting power. 
Heat, light, chemical affinity, electricity, magnetism, 
have been demonstrated to be different modes of 
motion ; they are all convertible ; and in many cases 
the precise amount of one which is equivalent to a 
precise amount of another has been accurately ascer- 
tained. 

Further still, when we pass from the consideration 
of inorganic life to that of living forms, we find no 
break in this continuity of forces. The principle is, 
indeed, somewhat obscured by the complexity of the 
factors involved ; but experiment almost, if not quite, 
demonstrates that all the physical activities of the 
most complex living beings are made up of links of 
that same chain that binds the inorganic world to- 
gether. Nerve activity and muscular activity are 
only other names for chemical and physical processes. 
As Mr. Spencer puts it, " Those modes of the Un- 
knowable which we call motion, heat, light, chemical 
affinity, etc., are alike transformable into each other, 
and into those modes of the Unknowable which we 
distinguish as sensation, emotion, thought ; these, in 
their turns, being directly or indirectly retransform- 
able into the original shapes." If, now, we add to 
this the consideration that the physical power of the 
universe, manifesting itself as force and energy, is 



THE ANSWER OF OBJECTIVE ANALYSIS. 57 

regarded by science as a store which never suffers 
diminution or increase, we have before us the data 
upon which the argument for the exclusion of mental 
causation from the category of real things is based. 

Professor Bain has stated the case as follows : " It 
would be incompatible with everything we know of 
the cerebral action to suppose that the physical chain 
ends abruptly in a physical void, occupied by an im- 
material substance, which immaterial substance, after 
working alone, imparts its results to the other edge 
of the physical break, and determines the active re- 
ponse, — two shores of the material, with an interven- 
ing ocean of the immaterial." 2 On the other hand, it 
is demonstrable that mental phenomena cannot be a 
result outside the physical chain. For if any portion 
of the stream of energy were diverted from its phys- 
ical course for the production of mind, that portion 
would disappear, and the physical consequents would 
cease to be the equivalents of their physical antece- 
dents. Eminent physicists have tried in a great vari- 
ety of ways to evade the force of these considerations ; 
but, turn which way they will, they seem still to be 
confronted by the dilemma which commands them to 
choose between science and common sense. Science 
apparently declares that intelligence and will cannot, 
as such, modify the physical course of events, — that 
there are, in fact, no such things as intelligence and 
will, distinct from physical changes. 

Mr. Spencer does not hesitate to adopt this con- 
clusion. There is, he tells us, but one underlying 
reality, one series of changes. But this one real 

1 Mind and Body, p. 131. 



58 WHAT IS REALITY? 

series manifests itself with two faces. The evidence 
that there is but one series of changes is massed in 
the following paragraph : " We have seen that the 
several circumstances which facilitate nervous action 
are also circumstances which facilitate or hinder feel- 
ing. We have seen that as nervous action occupies 
appreciable time, so feeling occupies appreciable 
time. We have seen that each feeling leaves a par- 
tial incapacity for a like feeling, as each nervous 
action leaves a partial incapacity for a like nervous 
action. We have seen that, other things equal, the 
intensities of feelings vary as the intensities of the 
correlative nervous actions. We have seen that the 
difference between direct and indirect nervous dis- 
turbances corresponds to the difference between the 
vivid feelings we call real and the faint feelings 
we call ideal. And we have seen that certain more 
special objective phenomena, which nervous actions 
present, have answering subjective phenomena in the 
forms of feeling we distinguish as desires." x 

From this it appears that when the doctrine of 
the persistence of force, as applied to the phenomena 
of mind, is tested by the facts of subjective expe- 
rience, the deduction that only one series of changes 
is possible is indorsed at every step by a farther in- 
duction. And this, together with many other con- 
siderations adduced by Mr. Spencer, "brings us," 
to use his own words, " to the true conclusion, — the 
conclusion that it is one and the same ultimate real- 
ity which is manifested to us subjectively and objec- 
tively. For while the nature of that which is mani- 
1 Principles of Psychology, sec. 51. 



THE AN S WEB OF OBJECTIVE ANALYSIS. 59 

fested under either form proves to be inscrutable, 
the order of its manifestations throughout all mental 
phenomena proves to be the same as the order of its 
manifestations throughout all material phenomena." 1 

The reason why we find it so difficult to adjust 
our minds to this new conception of things is, we 
are told, because a false impression is continually 
produced by the process that we call volition. For 
instance, when a man performs a certain action after 
having been subject to an impulse consisting of a 
group of psychical states, he usually asserts that he 
determined to perform the action; and by speak- 
ing of his conscious self as having been something 
separate from the group of psychical states constitut- 
ing the impulse, he is led into the error of suppos- 
ing that it is not the impulse alone which determined 
the action. But this is an illusion, arising from the 
recondite nature and the extreme complication of the 
forces involved. "The composition of forces is so 
intricate, and from moment to moment so varied, 
that the effects are not calculable. These effects are, 
however, as conformable to law as the simplest reflex 
actions. The irregularity and apparent freedom are 
inevitable results of the complexity ; and equally arise 
in the inorganic world under parallel conditions." 

For example, " A body in space, subject to the 
attraction of a single other body, moves in a direc- 
tion that can be accurately predicted. If subject to 
the attraction of two other bodies, its course is but 
approximately calculable. If subject to the attrac- 
tion of three bodies, its course can be calculated with 
1 Principles of Psychology, see. 273. 



60 WHAT IS REALITY? 

still less precision. And if it is surrounded by- 
bodies of all sizes, at all distances, its motion will be 
apparently uninfluenced by any of them ; it will 
move in some indefinable varying line that appears 
to be self-determined ; it will seem to be free. Sim- 
ilarly in proportion as the cohesions of each psychical 
state to others becomes great in number and various 
in degree, the psychical changes will become incalcu- 
lable and apparently subject to no law." 1 

This explanation Mr. Spencer offers as the prob- 
able source of the current illusion of self-determined 
action. But, he adds, the fact does not depend upon 
the explanation. Even though we were able to offer 
no conceivable reason for the existence of such an 
illusion, we should still be shut up to the acceptance 
of the fact that the notion of free will must be, and 
is, a delusive appearance. This is the stunming up 
of the matter. " Psychical changes either conform 
to law, or they do not. If they do not conform to 
law, this work, in common with all works on the 
subject, is sheer nonsense ; no science of psychology 
is possible. If they do conform to law, there can- 
not be any such thing as free will." 2 

These passages are sufficiently explicit ; but they 
do not exhibit the full extent of the conflict between 
the Synthetic Philosophy and common realism. For 
when an attempt is made to interpret the whole 
world from the standpoint of the law of the persis- 
tence of force, it is not alone the doctrine of the free- 
dom of the will that must be thrust out. We are 

1 Principles of Psychology, sec 219. 

2 Ibid., sec. 220. 



THE ANSWER OF OBJECTIVE ANALYSIS. 61 

equally called upon to bid a last farewell to every 
belief that rests upon the conception that mind is a 
distinctive reality. That which we have been in the 
habit of calling purposive in actions is as much a 
delusion as the belief in free will. True, a certain 
kind of reality is allowed to mind ; it is said to be its 
inner face. But all the prerogative, all the efficiency 
of reality, has been made over to the outer face. 
The inner face is a pure nonentity that exerts no 
influence whatever upon results. Its reality is like 
that which the extreme idealist concedes to things 
when he says they " are ideas in the form of other- 
ness." 

It seems hardly necessary to spend more time on 
this part of our subject, The foregoing outline is 
sufficient to indicate the results reached by the Syn- 
thetic Philosophy, and the relation in which these 
results stand to the law from which they are a deduc- 
tion. No one will care to dispute that the argument 
is logical and conclusive from that point where the 
doctrine of the persistence of force is admitted to be 
the ultimate and all-comprehensive reality of the 
world as known to us. But we have now to exam- 
ine the grounds upon which such an admission can 
be justified. We have seen that the unification of 
knowledge by this law reduces to illusion the very 
foundations of the whole realm of subjective reality. 
We must, therefore, turn back to the primary as- 
sumptions from which the belief in the reality of 
each realm respectively takes its departure. 

Our first inquiry shall be, How does the Synthetic 
Philosophy treat our four fxandamental assumptions 



62 WHAT IS REALITY? 

of common sense or common realism ? Those as- 
sumptions were said to be : First, / exist. Second, 
There exists in time and space a world external to 
myself. Third, I can produce changes in myself 
and in the external world. Fourth, Changes take 
place in me, and in that world, of which I am not 
the author. 

The first words of Mr. Spencer with regard to the 
beliefs of every-day life are full of promise. They 
are as follows : " As we cannot isolate a single organ 
of a living body, and deal with it as though it had 
a life independent of the rest, so from the organized 
structure of our cognitions we cannot cut out one, 
and proceed as if it had survived the separation." 
And, again, he says : " The developed intelligence is 
framed upon certain organized and consolidated con- 
ceptions of which it cannot divest itself ; and which 
it can no more stir without using than the body can 
stir without help of its limbs." This I have called 
'promising, because it is exceedingly broad. It seems 
to be a pledge, in advance, that all the elements of 
our common realism are to be included and harmo- 
nized in the synthesis that is before us. The next 
step is still reassuring till we come to its last word. 

In view of the above-mentioned solidarity of our 
ordinary cognitions, Mr. Spencer asks : " In what 
way is it possible for intelligence, striving after phi- 
losophy, to give any account of these conceptions, 
and to show either their validity or their invalidity ? 
There is but one way. Those of them which are 
vital, or cannot be severed from the rest without 
mental dissolution, must be assumed as true prom- 



THE ANSWEB OF OBJECTIVE ANALYSIS. 63 

sionally" x This last word indicates, by its limita- 
tion, the course that has been chosen. Mr. Spencer 
is not to show how all the necessary elements of 
thought of which the developed intelligence cannot 
divest itself may be unified. But he is to demon- 
strate that certain of these elements are true and 
others false. His synthesis is to be developed from 
a single principle, and this principle is reached by 
precisely the same method that Fichte and Hegel 
employed when they sought to escape Kant's di- 
lemma of skepticism or dogmatism. 

They avoided Kant's conclusion by denying his 
underlying assumption, namely, the assumption that 
all the postulates of common realism have equally 
valid and necessary grounds, and that we can dis- 
cover in no one of them any decided superiority. 
Mr. Spencer does the same. The only difference 
being that he discriminates in favor of that member 
of our organized cognitions that the German philos- 
ophers discriminated against, and develops his whole 
system from it. We have seen how they justified 
their choice of the conscious ego as the measure of 
all reality. We have now to see how Mr. Spencer 
defends his choice of the phenomena of the external 
world as the touchstone of his system. 

In a general way, the possibility of discriminating 
between the rival claims of the elements of common 
realism is argued after this fashion. Man is the 
product of a process of evolution, in the course of 
which he has formed many false conceptions. Even 
the simplest of his impressions of the world are com- 

1 First Principles, sec. 39. 



64 WHAT IS UEALlTYf 

posite tKings. They are the unconscious inferences 
of the mind responding automatically to external 
stimuli. They therefore partake of the imperfection 
of the partially evolved organ or complex of organs. 
But, all imperfect as they are, they appear to the 
child-man as finalities and, later, become woven into 
the more highly elaborated ideas that form them- 
selves from them. During long ages of human ex- 
perience there is little or no disturbance of these 
original conceptions. The whole structure of thought, 
therefore, has time to become thoroughly organized 
and permanently established as a system of convic- 
tions and modes of thinking. They constitute, in 
fact, an acquired nature of the mind. 

But the mind, or rather the complex of physical 
sequences which we call mind, has the power of self- 
reconstruction. At a certain point in evolution the 
critical faculty is developed. The grounds of belief 
are examined and analyzed; and we have meta- 
physics. But no progress is made by means of this 
instrument of analysis. For the mind cannot get out 
of its self-woven net. It cannot get beyond those 
unconscious inferences of simple perception which 
contain the seeds of all its contradictions. So long 
as it works only with the materials which these have 
furnished, there is no escape from its errors. It re- 
turns continually to the point from whence it set out. 
It is forever the victim of its own definitions. Then, 
at a later stage, arises science. And through science 
the critical faculty is at last put in possession of in- 
struments by the use of which it can make good its 
escape from the hopeless labyrinths of metaphysics, 
and also build up a true synthesis. 






THE ANSWER OF OBJECTIVE ANALYSIS. 65 

These instruments are rectified simple perceptions* 
It is with these that science begins the work all over 
again, and lays for our knowledge of the world an 
entirely new and trustworthy foundation. By its 
patient comparison of carefully verified facts it is 
able to cancel errors, and to furnish the mind with 
true data for the construction of a reliable and con- 
sistent philosophy. That this philosophy should 
meet with great opposition is not only natural but 
necessary ; for it has to effect a complete reorgan- 
ization of human thought, and can prevail only by 
fighting its way through all the cobwebs and rubbish 
that have accumulated in the lapse of centuries. 

Thus far in general. Now, more particularly. 
Mr. Spencer calls our attention to the fact that the 
analysis of our experimentally organized cognitions 
discloses two orders of manifestations. These two 
form heterogeneous streams in the mind, which run 
along, side by side ; " each now broadening and now 
narrowing, each now threatening to obliterate its 
neighbor, and now in turn threatened with obliter- 
ation, but neither ever quite excluding the other 
from their common channel." These two classes of 
manifestations may be called, respectively, impres- 
sions and ideas. But the use of these words is dep- 
recated, because of the misapprehensions that are 
likely to attach to them. An essential distinction 
between the two streams may be expressed by the 
words vivid and faint ; and it is also important to 
notice that manifestations of the vivid order are 
original and those of the other order are copies. The 
first are those which depend for their existence upon 



66 WHAT IS REALITY? 

sensible contact with the external world ; the others 
are those which may detach themselves from the 
first and maintain a quasi independence. In short, 
these two classes or streams correspond respectively 
to the two worlds of thought known to philosophy as 
the worlds of the object and subject, of the non-ego 
and the ego, of the not-self and the self. They pre- 
sent themselves to us" as antithetically-opposed di- 
visions of the entire assemblage of manifestations of 
the unknowable." 

Mr. Spencer is to prove to us that a true philoso- 
phy must find its ultimate principle of reality in the 
world of the not-self His whole system hangs upon 
his ability to do this. For, failing to prove the supe- 
rior claims of the phenomena of the external world 
to represent reality, he falls a victim to one of the 
horns of Kant's dilemma ; and his philosophy is 
condemned, as one that is built upon " a dogmatic 
confidence and obstinate persistence in certain asser- 
tions, without granting a fair hearing to the other 
side of the question." 

The line of his defense is foreshadowed in the 
characteristics of the two streams of manifestation 
already adverted to. The world of the not-self be- 
cause its manifestations are vivid and original, takes 
precedence, in the matter of reality, of the internal 
world of the self, the manifestations of which are 
faint and derived. In the "Principles of Psycho- 
logy" this argument appears under three heads: 
" The argument from distinctness" " The argument 
from priority" " The argument from simplicity" 

We will examine these in the above order. First, 



THE ANSWER OF OBJECTIVE ANALYSIS. 67 

as regards distinctness. The illustrations given by- 
Mr. Spencer to prove that vivid representations are 
more reliable than faint ones are most convincing as 
far as they go, but they do not go far. They have 
to do only with the different modes of one class of 
experiences. They have, therefore, no applicability 
whatever when we are comparing the relative va- 
lidity of different classes of experiences. We are 
reminded by a multiplicity of illustrations that a pre- 
sentation of memory is less distinct than a presenta- 
tion of immediate perception ; and that because of 
this we place less dependence upon it. We are in 
the constant habit of rectifying the former by the 
latter. Not to accept the evidence of sight, hearing, 
and touch, when they contradict memory, is simple 
madness. 

But how does this affect the problem under dis- 
cussion ? The realities of the idealist are not the 
faint presentations of memory. They are the vivid 
presentations of self-consciousness. These form a 
class of experiences by themselves. They are abso- 
lutely unique, and not to be directly compared as to 
vividness with any other class of impressions, simply 
because they have no principle of likeness to them. 
Within the class they also may be divided into vivid 
and faint. A remembered consciousness of self is 
fainter and less reliable than an immediate, present 
consciousness of self. 

But we are not just now concerned as to these dis- 
tinctions within the class. The great conflict is be- 
tween the different classes of manifestations, between 
those of the subjective and those of the objective 



68 WHAT IS REALITY? 

world. If there is a question of vivid and faint be- 
tween these, our only answer, an indirect one, is to 
be found in the realm of conduct. We must assume 
that the more vivid are those that prevail in conduct, 
the less vivid are those that are overcome. And by 
this test we are only told that sometimes the one and 
sometimes the other is the more vivid. With the 
animals below man the presentations from the ex- 
ternal world are all powerful. But with man the 
idea of self as moral or immoral, as noble Or base, is 
often far more powerful, and presumably more vivid, 
than the presentations that come through the senses 
from the external world. All successful resistance 
to the allurements of sense in favor of a moral ideal 
is proof that subjective presentations are at times 
more vivid than the opposing objective ones. 

We come next to the argument from priority. In 
opposition to the assumption of the idealist that we 
are primarily conscious only of our sensations, Mr. 
Spencer affirms that " the thing primarily known is 
not that a sensation has been experienced, but that 
there exists an outer object. . . . The existence of 
a sensation is an hypothesis that cannot be framed 
until external existence is known." 2 For the sup- 
port of this affirmation he refers us to the mental 
biography of a child or the developed conception of 
things held in common by the savage and the rustic. 
He pins even the idealist to this priority by an argu- 
mentum ad hominem, admonishing him that he can- 
not fail to remember that originally even he regarded 
colors as inherent in the substances distinguished by 

1 Psychology, sec. 404. 



THE ANSWER OF OBJECTIVE ANALYSIS. 69 

them, that sweetness was conceived as an intrinsic 
property of sugar, that hardness and softness were 
supposed actually to dwell in stones and in flesh. 
Remembering all this, the philosopher cannot fail to 
admit that the idealistic hypothesis was long subse- 
quent to the realistic belief, and that it was only 
after a considerable amount of practice in throwing 
intellectual somersets that he succeeded in inverting 
his original conception. 

That this is a true statement of the historical or- 
der of our conceptions no one can doubt. The be- 
lief in the reality of the outward world of sense is a 
primary, unreasoned belief. But the mere fact that 
it is first in order of development does not stamp 
this belief with any peculiar claim to reality or truth 
as against subsequent opposing developments. On 
the contrary, in view of the hypothesis of evolution, 
this priority of the realistic conception is against 
'its acceptance as a final deliverance of reason. It 
might, indeed, be turned into a powerful argument 
by the idealist, on the ground that the latest, most 
highly evolved products of the human mind should 
always, other things being equal, be regarded as the 
nearest to reality. But to find this use made of pri- 
ority we need not turn to the opposite camp. Mr. 
Spencer himself has, as we have seen, constructed 
his whole system upon this assumption. The Syn- 
thetic Philosophy is commended to us as the recon- 
struction of our traditional beliefs by science, — the 
purification of current modes of thought, based upon 
misconceptions inherited from the crude infancy of 
the race, by the latest and most highly elaborated 



70 WHAT IS REALITY 1 

interpretation of things. The reader is constantly 
reminded of this by Mr. Spencer, but, for example's 
sake, I will cite a few passages from his First Prin- 
ciples. 

Three fundamental facts of the world, as we have 
seen, are said to be the " Indestructibility of Mat- 
ter," the " Continuity of Motion," the " Persistence 
of Force." They are truths of the highest order of 
certainty, before which all conflicting truths must 
succumb. But these, let us observe, are none of them 
truths which commend themselves to the undevel- 
oped mind of the savage, the rustic, or the child. 

As regards the Indestructibility of Matter, Mr. 
Spencer says, " So far from being admitted as a self- 
evident truth, this would, in primitive times, have 
been rejected as a self-evident error. There was once 
universally current a notion that things could vanish 
into absolute nothing, or arise out of absolute no- 
thing. . . . The gradual accumulation of experiences," 
however, and still more, the organization of experi- 
ences, has tended slowly to reverse this conviction, 
until now the doctrine that matter is indestructible 
has become a commonplace." 1 Nay, even more than 
this is true. It has in the course of mental evolution 
become not only a commonplace, but " a necessary 
truth," — a truth " the negation of which is incon- 
ceivable." " There are necessary truths in Physics," 
we are told, " for the apprehension of which a de- 
veloped intelligence is required ; and before such 
intelligence arises, not only may there be failure to 
apprehend the necessity of them, but there may be 
vague beliefs in their contraries." 

1 First Principles, sec. 52. 



THE ANSWER OF OBJECTIVE ANALYSIS. 71 

Let us observe here that the vague belief is said 
to be that which springs up at first hand from im- 
mediate contact with nature ; and farther on we 
read : " When, during mental evolution, the vague 
ideas arising in a nervous structure imperfectly or- 
ganized are replaced by the clear ideas arising in a 
definite nervous structure, this definite structure, 
moulded by experience into correspondence with 
external phenomena, makes necessary in thought 
the relations answering to absolute uniformities in 
things. Hence, among others, the conception of the 
indestructibility of matter." 1 

It is needless for us to dwell longer on priority as 
a test of reality or truth ; let us go on to the third 
criterion, the argument from simplicity. 

This is briefly stated in the following words : 
" The consciousness in which Realism rests is 
reached by a single inferential act, while the con- 
sciousness professed to be reached by Idealism is 
reached by a series of inferential acts." 2 The same 
idea is more elaborately stated thus : " If we com- 
pare the mental process which yields Realism with 
the mental process said to yield Idealism or Skepti- 
cism, we see that apart from other differences the 
two differ immensely in their lengths. The one is so 
simple and direct as to appear, at first sight, unde- 
composable ; while the other, long, involved, and in- 
direct, is not simply decomposable, but requires much 
ingenuity to compose it. Ought we then to hold 
that in the short and simple process there is less 

1 First Principles, S3C. 53. 

2 Principles of Psychology, see. 413. 



72 WHAT IS BEALITY ? 

danger of going wrong than in the long and elabo- 
rate process ; or ought we to hold with the meta- 
physician that in the long and elaborate process 
we shall not go wrong, though we go wrong in the 
short one?" 1 

To choose the latter alternative is, Mr. Spencer 
affirms, logically equivalent to accepting the follow- 
ing " eminently insane " propositions. " A bullet 
fired at a target a hundred yards off may miss it, but 
if fired at the same target a thousand yards off the 
probability of missing it is much less. In walking 
over a frozen lake a quarter of a mile wide you are 
not unlikely to slip down ; but if the frozen lake is 
a mile wide there is but little probability that you 
will slip down in walking over it." 2 This certainly 
seems to prove the Idealist to be an absolutely irra- 
tional creature. But before accepting it as the last 
word in the matter, we must reflect that Idealism 
can make just as strong a use of this argument 
against the highly elaborated generalizations of sci- 
ence. 

The doctrines of the " Indestructibility of Mat- 
ter " and of the " Persistence of Force " appeal to 
the subjective philosopher as the long processes that 
it has required much ingenuity to construct, as op- 
posed to the apparently immediate deliverances of 
consciousness. Such a deliverance, for example, as 
the proposition — / exist and originate changes in 
the world. The simple fact is that Physical Kealism 
and Idealism have each their long, and each their 

1 Principles of Psychology, sec. 407. 

2 Ibid., sec. 407. 



THE AN S WEB OF OBJECTIVE ANALYSIS. 73 

short processes ; and that whenever we contrast the 
long process of the one with the short process of the 
other we are confroDtecl with the necessity of accept- 
ing the short one as against the long one. That is, 
we are shut up to this necessity if we hold with the 
dogmatist of either side that the one must be false 
if the other is true. 

How absolutely subversive of Mr. Spencer's 
claims this argument from simplicity is, will be seen 
when we apply it to the main question with regard 
to causation. The proposition denied by physical 
realism is an exceedingly simple one, derived by a 
single inferential act from experience. That propo- 
sition is — Mental causation as distinct from phy- 
sical causation is a reality. The immediateness, 
universality, and persistence of this belief are de- 
monstrated by all our language and by all our con- 
duct. Every plan formed for the determination of 
future action is an expression of it ; and the carry- 
ing out of every such plan is to the unsophisticated 
mind a new proof of it. So early is this belief de- 
veloped, and so deeply is it rooted, that no amount 
of culture avails to eradicate it. And, on the other 
hand, as the author of the " Synthetic Philosophy " 
himself tells us, the true idea of causation is one of 
the very latest to be developed because it involves 
such extremely elaborate processes. " Even the sim- 
plest notion of cause," he says, " as we understand 
it, can be reached only after many like instances 
have been grouped into a single generalization ; and 
through all ascending steps, higher notions of causa- 
tion imply wider notions of generality." 



74 WHAT IS REALITY? 

So difficult, indeed, is the attainment of this con- 
ception of cause that men of the highest culture are 
frequently found to be quite ignorant of it. " On 
studying the various ethical theories," Mr. Spencer 
affirms, " I am struck with the fact that they are all 
characterized either by entire absence of the idea of 
causation, or by inadequate presence of it." Nor is 
even this the most extreme exemplification of the 
far-awayness from ordinary thinking of this highest 
peak of generalization. " Deficient belief in cau- 
sation is, indeed, exemplified even in those whose 
discipline has been specially fitted to generate this 
belief — even in men of science." 2 Now, let us ask, 
what becomes of this elaborate idea of causation on 
the principle of discarding the long process and ac- 
cepting the short one ? 

We may seem to have dwelt too long on this point 
already ; but we must make one more application of 
it. After his development of the triple argument 
from distinctness, priority, and simplicity, Mr. Spen- 
cer still affirms the necessity of a more definite and 
absolute criterion for the determination of reality. 
This he finds in the following proposition, which 
he calls the " universal postulate " — " An abortive 
attempt to conceive the negation of a proposition 
shows that the cognition expressed is one that we 
are compelled to accept" 2 The radical impossibil- 
ity of using such a test as this for the explication of 
the problems of the external world will be shown at 
a later stage of the discussion. For the present I 

1 Data of Ethics, sec. 17. 

2 Principles of Psychology, sec. 433. 



THE ANSWER OF OBJECTIVE ANALYSIS. 75 

wish only to apply, to the test itself, the principle of 
the long and the short process. In explanation of 
his universal postulate, Mr. Spencer hastens to say 
that " some propositions have been wrongly accepted 
as true, because their negations were supposed in- 
conceivable when they were not." 

This obstacle to the application of the absolute 
test must at once suggest itself with a good deal of 
force to every one who is not as yet convinced that 
the law of the persistence of force is " the sole truth 
which transcends experience by underlying it." To 
such an one, it may appear to be more impossible to 
conceive the negative of some of the truths that this 
law contradicts ; and if so, he must believe his men- 
tal condition to be as abnormal as the physical con- 
dition of a man who sees motes floating before his 
eyes when there are no motes in the atmosphere. 
But how is he to clarify his vision ? 

There is but one way : he must, as we have already 
been told, enter upon a long and very elaborate pro- 
cess of mental purgation, at the end of which he may 
hope to discover that his original impossibilities, the 
results of single inferential acts from experience, 
are no impossibilities at all. For instance, he may 
come to see clearly that the negative of the proposi- 
tion, Mental causation is a distinct reality, is not at 
all inconceivable. But he must be prepared to bear 
with equanimity the gibes of the idealist, who, backed 
by the common sense of the world, reminds him " that 
only after a considerable amount of practice in 
throwing intellectual somersets did he succeed in 
inverting his original conception." 



76 WHAT IS REALITY ? 

We have now again reached the point of summing 
up ; and again we have to acknowledge that we have 
reached only negative results. We have only shown 
what reality is not. At the outset of our discussion 
we confronted Kant's discouraging affirmation that 
when we employ our reason on the fundamental pos- 
tulates of the understanding, derived from experience, 
there arises a natural antithesis, embodied in certain 
sophistical propositions or theorems, which have the 
following peculiarities : " Each is in itself not only 
self-consistent, but possesses conditions of its neces- 
sity in the very nature of reason — only that, unluck- 
ily, there exist just as valid and necessary grounds 
for maintaining the contrary proposition." On the 
strength of this, we found the same philosopher 
further affirming that reason is consequently " com- 
pelled, either on the one hand to abandon itself to a 
despairing skepticism, or on the other to assume a 
dogmatic confidence and obstinate persistence in cer- 
tain assertions without granting a fair hearing to the 
other side of the question." 

We have seen how two classes of philosophers have 
sought to avoid this dilemma by affirming, in oppo- 
sition to Kant, that reason is able to discriminate 
between the rival propositions offered to it by expe- 
rience ; and that analysis is capable of putting us in 
possesssion of an ultimate principle which may be re- 
garded as an unconditioned reality. We have exam- 
ined briefly the methods and results of these philoso- 
phers, and have seen reason to pronounce them wholly 
inconclusive and unwarrantable. Each of the sys- 
tems developed by them from a single principle pro- 



THE ANSWER OF OBJECTIVE ANALYSIS. 77 

fesses to be a complete unification and purification of 
our knowledge. But the unification proves to be only 
the unification of a fragment arbitrarily torn from the 
organized body of common realism ; and the purifica- 
tion proves to be the equally arbitrary exclusion from 
reality of a part of our knowledge that is just as vital 
as the part retained. The reasonings of each in so 
far as they are positive, that is, directed to the proof 
of the reality of the part chosen, are unassailable ; 
but, on the other hand, they are equally good for 
establishing the reality of the rejected part. So also, 
in each case, the reasoning that is applied to the de- 
molition of the assumed non-reality is no less destruc- 
tive to the assumed reality. 

Having reached this result, — having shown the 
impossibility of restricting the idea of reality either 
to the subjective or to the objective interpretation, 
we may go on to a positive discussion of the problem. 
And in the next chapter the reader may look for a 
direct answer to the main question. 

Before leaving this aspect of the subject, however, 
I wish to prepare the way by pointing out what my 
course will be with regard to Kant's dilemma. There 
seems to me to be a flaw in the statement which he 
makes of the case. The complete antithesis to a uni- 
versal skepticism is not, as he implies, the dogmatic 
affirmation of one side of reality and the denial of 
the other side. For this is neither wholly dogma- 
tism nor wholly skepticism, but a mingling of the 
two. Fichte and Spencer are each dogmatic as to 
one half of reality and skeptical as to the other half. 
The true antithesis to a skepticism with regard to the 



78 WHAT IS REALITY? 

whole is that which I have elsewhere called a dog- 
matism with regard to the whole ; and our criticism 
of the intermediate position leaves us free to recon- 
struct the dilemma as follows. We must either 
reject all the fundamental propositions of common 
realism, which is universal skepticism; or, on the 
other hand, we must accept them all, which is im- 
partial dogmatism. 

The acceptance of the former alternative, Kant 
says, " might perhaps deserve the title of the Eu- 
thanasia of pure reason." The acceptance of the lat- 
ter he brands as " mere mysology reduced to princi- 
ples." Of this last also Fichte would have said that 
it is no philosophy at all ; and Mr. Spencer refers to 
it as " that position, apparently satisfactory to some, 
in which are entertained two mutually-destructive 
beliefs." This is, however, the alternative that I 
accept ; and in what follows I shall try to defend 
this choice, not only as one that affords the sole pos- 
sible basis for an affirmative philosophy, but also as 
one that is eminently rational and self -consistent. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE ANSWER OF LIFE. 

At the close of the last chapter, the reader was 
promised a direct answer to our main question. 
Risking abruptness, therefore, I will proceed at once 
to submit a test of reality. It is as follows : The 
necessity of living the affirmation of a proposition 
shmvs that this proposition expresses a reality. For 
the sake of antithesis, I have ventured to frame my 
statement somewhat after the fashion of Mr. Spen- 
cer's universal postulate. That postulate, said to be 
the ultimate criterion of truth, is : " An abortive 
attempt to conceive the negation of a proposition 
shows that the cognition expressed is one we are 
compelled to accept." We have already seen the 
impracticability of this test as applied to the world 
of concrete experiences. But it is necessary, at this 
point in the discussion, to clearly understand why it 
is impracticable. 

Mr. Spencer's mistake is in attempting to apply a 
criterion that is valid within a limited sphere to the 
whole realm of truth. There is no universal test of 
truth, for the simple reason that all truth is not of 
the same kind. On the one hand, there is the truth 
that expresses the relations between pure abstrac- 
tions ; and, on the other hand, there is the truth that 



80 WHAT IS REALITY? 

expresses the relations between the concrete realities 
of life. 

When we are dealing with the former, the test of 
the non-conceivability of the opposite may be legiti- 
mately applied, because we are here concerned solely 
with concepts. We have marked off for ourselves a 
particular sphere of thought by means of definitions 
and postulates, and within this sphere our knowledge 
is absolute and complete. It is, so to speak, inclosed 
within walls, so that there is a perfect rebound for 
every proposition. We have absolute agreements 
and disagreements, because we ourselves have made 
the absolute definitions to which every statement is 
referred. And the inability to conceive the nega- 
tion of a proposition demonstrates its truth, simply 
because such a negation contradicts the definitions of 
the terms in which the proposition is stated. 

But when, on the other hand, we are dealing with 
the concrete realities of life, we are quite outside the 
realm of absolute agreements and contradictions. 
Our knowledge of the elements with which we have 
to do is in no sense complete. They have relations 
altogether unknown to us, and the progress of know- 
ledge is continually bringing with the range of con- 
ceivability combinations that were once unthinkable. 
Moreover, the relations that are known are so differ- 
ently apprehended as to make any consensus, on the 
ground of conceivability, impossible. The speciali- 
zation of knowledge does not tend to draw men of cul- 
tivation into such a consensus. On the contrary, it 
separates individuals and groups, and makes the theo- 
retical inconceivabilities of one group the theoretical 



THE ANSWER OF LIFE. 81 

conceivabilities of another. To find a ground of 
agreement, therefore, we must retrace our steps from 
the widely extended frontiers of theoretical know- 
ledge to that common experience that binds all 
classes of minds together. 

This course commends itself to us, not simply as 
the sole practicable one, but also as the only rational 
one. For in referring the question of the truth of 
concrete existence and agencies back to life, we refer 
them to the sources whence our belief in them has 
sprung. And just as we found it legitimate to test 
the statements of an abstract science by an appeal to 
conceiv ability, because the whole structure of thought 
in such a science rests upon concepts, so we affirm the 
legitimate and necessary test of statements about the 
realities of life to be an appeal to life in which they 
have originated. 

But this account of the origin of our fundamental 
beliefs may be challenged. On what ground do we 
say that they have originated in life or experience, 
rather than in the nature of the mind itself? I 
would reply that the former statement is not the 
denial of the latter ; it is only a more complete ex- 
pression of the facts. The nature of the mind is not 
something that has been created outside of experi- 
ence. It has been developed and made what it is in 
connection with experience, — not simply the experi- 
ence of the individual, but also that of the race, 
handed on from one generation to another. 

The process by which our convictions with regard 
to the reality of things have come to be what they 
are may be studied to advantage in the developing 



82 WHAT IS BEAUTY f 

mind of a child. Every infant lias to find out for 
himself that there are solid things that he cannot 
walk through, forceful things that he must avoid 
to escape injury. In short, by an unending series 
of encounters with the external world he learns to 
respect it, and to govern himself with reference to 
agencies that rigidly hold their own, At the same 
time, he learns his own powers. In his conflicts with 
things, the growing boy discovers that, within certain 
limits, he can become their master. If a solid thing 
is not too heavy, he can remove it. Though he can- 
not crack a nut with his hands or with his teeth, he 
learns that he can attain his object by compelling a 
stone to assist him. The most real things of the world 
to him are the things that can do something. To his 
thinking the atmosphere is nothing because he dis- 
covers no resistance from it. But the wind is decid- 
edly something because it can blow his hat off ; and 
he also is something because he can run after it and 
put it on again. 

It is the same with the mature man. He continu- 
ally increases the range of his knowledge of real 
things, and of their relations, by experimenting ; and 
though he can greatly assist himself in this by the 
use of analogies, it is to experience that he must 
always come back for the verification of his analogi- 
cally conceived hypotheses. 

A little reflection will convince us that the tena- 
city with which we hold to the belief in the reality of 
things, as against the skeptical argument of the 
idealist, and to the reality of mind as against the 
skepticism of the physical realist, is a tenacity not 



THE ANSWER OF LIFE. 83 

born of argument. For if it were born of reasoning, 
it would also succumb to reasoning; and we have 
already seen that the destructive argument is just as 
good as the constructive. Kant states only the truth 
when he says : " If any one could free himself en- 
tirely from all considerations of interest, and weigh 
without partiality the assertions of reason, attending 
only to their content irrespective of the consequences 
which follow them, he would live in a state of contin- 
ual hesitation. To-day he would feel convinced that 
the human will is free ; to-morrow, considering the 
indissoluble chain of nature, he would look on free- 
dom as a mere illusion, and declare nature to be all- 
in-all. But if he were called to action, the play of 
the merely speculative reason would disappear like 
the shapes of a dream, and practical interest would 
dictate his choice of principles." x 

As matter of fact, we do continually obey the dic- 
tation of the practical interests of life ; and in so 
doing, we recognize an authority more forceful, 
more arbitrary, than that of reason. This same 
authority, and no other, it is that, in the face of all 
skeptical objections, holds us faithful to the postu- 
lates of common realism. For however closely beset 
with reasons for denying one of these postulates, we 
know, even in the very moment of our faltering, that 
if, for the sake of argument, we pronounce it to be 
unreal, we shall presently be compelled to dishonor 
our words by our acts. Let us observe, further, that 
the degree of our conviction with regard to the real- 
ity of anything is measured by the extent to which 
it enters into life. 

1 Critique of Pure Reason, p. 9 C 2. Bohn's ed. 



84 WHAT IS REALITY f 

It has probably already occurred to the reader 
that our test of reality is one that admits only of a 
restricted application. As to the reality of some 
things it will give only an uncertain answer, and as 
to the reality of others it will give no answer at all. 
But we are not looking for a universally applicable 
test, but only for one that is true in so far as it is 
applicable. If we can get a foundation for reality, 
a few ultimate data, it is all we ask. 

We have compressed our statement of reality into 
four propositions, which we assumed to be univer- 
sally held by unsophisticated men. 1 And if now we 
inquire why there is universal assent to these par- 
ticular propositions, I think we must acknowledge 
that it is because all men are obliged daily to live 
the affirmation of them. The truth of this may not 
be equally apparent with regard to all four of our 
postulates ; and for the sake of making sure that it 
is as true of one as of another, it may be worth while 
to examine the grounds on which the assumption is 
based. To simplify the matter we may reduce our 
four propositions to two, as follows : — 

First, The external world, known to us through 
our senses, is a world of real agencies that act and 
react upon us. Second, The human mind is a real 
originating cause, which to some extent modifies arid 
directs itself and external agencies. 

1 These propositions are as follows : First, I exist. Second, There 
exists, in time and space, a world external to myself. Third, I 
can produce changes in myself and in the external world. Fourth, 
Changes take place in me, and in that world, of which I am not the 
author. 



THE ANSWER OF LIFE. 85 

It might, at first sight, seem sufficiently clear that 
daily life involves the necessity of living the affirma- 
tion of both these propositions. But there is this 
difference between them : when the necessity of liv- 
ing the latter is called in question, the reaffirmation 
of it is less decisive and absolute than it is in the 
case of the former. It is more clearly seen that the 
former abuts, so to speak, on substantial, permanent 
things. The latter seeks first its verification in a 
complex process which presents a more yielding 
front to skepticism. When, for instance, a philoso- 
pher, in denial of the reality of the external world, 
proves satisfactorily to himself that a precipice has 
no existence except as a subjective phenomenon, the 
possibility or impossibility of living his denial may 
be quickly demonstrated by ascending to the roof 
of his house and walking off into space. But when 
the physical realist denies the distinctive reality of 
mental causation, we do not so quickly bring matters 
to a reductio ad absurdum. 

As the agency in question is a subjective one, we 
are easily drawn into the analysis of self-conscious- 
ness for the determination of the controversy. We 
are told that effects apparently produced through 
the agency of mind are in reality produced by purely 
physical causes, — causes that are lost to conscious- 
ness because of their complexity. And in the dazed 
contemplation of this complexity we ourselves get 
lost. The wielder of physical necessity fixes us 
with his eye and holds us as with a spell. He be- 
witches our judgment with the tale of transformations 
so manifold and intricate that any impossibility is 



86 WHAT IS REALITY f 

made to seem possible. But under this spell we 
need not remain. The appeal to experience is just 
as open to us for the decision of this question as for 
the demonstration of the reality of the things of the 
external world ; and the answer it will give is just as 
decisive. Let us see just what it is that we affirm, 
and what it is also that the physical realist denies. 

The belief that the mind has a unique power of 
influencing the course of events is often so stated as 
to constitute a palpable absurdity. When, for in- 
stance, the will is said to be absolutely untrammeled, 
the deliverances of experience are disregarded as 
much as when its freedom is altogether denied. 
What life really testifies is that the soul has the 
power of modifying both itself and external events 
to some extent. Unconscious habit and routine, in 
response to a proximately uniform environment, con- 
stitute the largest part of every man's life $ and it 
is only when we come to that smaller part, where 
routine is interrupted, that we recognize ourselves as 
free, intelligent agents. Much of that which is now 
almost mechanical had, without doubt, its origin in 
that which was conscious and deliberate. Conscious 
self-determination first constructed much of the ma- 
chinery that has subsequently run almost without 
consciousness. But, so far as current experience is 
concerned, it is only in a small part of life that we 
are actively engaged in modifying, with set purpose 
and by a purely spiritual agency, ourselves and the 
course of events. 

Now, the position of the physical realist involves 
the unconditional denial of purposive or spiritual 



THE ANSWER OF LIFE. 87 

modification in any part of life. There can be no 
half way about it. It is not unfrequently the case 
that those who deny the freedom of the will, in def- 
erence to the mechanical view of things, seek to 
evade the consequences of their denial when they 
confront the problem of moral responsibility. The 
will is held to be powerless to withstand the impulses 
that urge to immediate action, but at the same time 
it is said that men are responsible for their actions, 
because they can exercise control over the first 
springs of thought and will by the direction of the 
attention. But this is only to temporize with the 
mechanical tyrant of thought. At whatsoever point 
exerted, and whether weak or strong, the power of 
the spirit to control and modify events is the same 
power. If it is recognized as existing at all, in any 
nook or corner of human life, a principle is affirmed 
that cannot be tolerated by the law of energy, as an 
exhaustive expression of the powers that be. It is 
impossible, therefore, for us to live our lives as re- 
sponsible beings, or to treat others as if they were/ 
responsible for their choices and actions, without 
living the affirmation of the proposition that mind 
is, to some extent, an independent cause of events. 

Nor is it alone within the realm of morals that 
the denial of mind as an independent cause can be 
brought to the test of life. For, as we Iiave already 
shown, to interpret the whole world from the stand- 
point of the law of the persistence of force makes it 
necessary to exclude from reality not only the power 
of moral choice, but equally the power of effecting 
any modification in events through what we call 



88 WHAT IS REALITY? 

purposive action. All that element in life which 
this word purposive expresses is, from the mechanical 
standpoint, pure illusion. 

This position is not, as a rule, unreservedly stated 
by the physical realists ; but Professor Huxley has 
no reserves in this matter. He distinctly declares 
that consciousness has absolutely no power of modi- 
fying the course of events. " The consciousness of 
brutes," he says, " would appear to be related to the 
mechanism of their body, simply as a collateral pro- 
duet of its working, and to be as completely without 
any power of modifying that working as the steam- 
whistle which accompanies the work of a locomotive 
engine is without influence upon its machinery. 
Their volition, if they have any, is an emotion in- 
dicative of physical changes, not a cause of such 
changes." What is true of brutes, Professor Hux- 
ley continues, is equally true of men. We are " con- 
scious automata " . . . " parts of the great series of 
causes and effects which, in unbroken continuity, 
composes that which is, and has been, and shall be, 
the sum of existence." 1 In another connection we 
find the following : " Any one who is acquainted 
with the history of science will admit that its prog- 
ress has in all ages meant, and now more than ever 
means, the extension of what we call matter and 
causation, and the concomitant gradual banishment 
from all regions of human thought of what we call 
spirit and spontaneity." 2 

There can be no doubt about the meaning of this. 

1 Science and Culture, pp. 243 and 246. 

2 The Fortnightly Review, February, 1869. 



THE ANSWER OF LIFE. 89 

Every form of what we call mental efficiency is de- 
nied. Intelligence enables us to be spectators of 
what is passing in the machines we call ourselves ; 
but it gives us no power whatever of influencing 
the course of events. 

It is needless to say that every one of us is daily 
living the affirmation of that which this view of 
things denies. All that part of our life which tran- 
scends that of the baser tribes is the direct outcome 
of the belief that we can shape events to our neces- 
sities and desires. We are civilized beings because 
we have this belief. But this is not all. Because 
of our consciousness and intelligence we are able to 
conceive the possibility of living the opposite, and of 
putting it to the test of experience. Just as we may 
question the reality of the external world by trying 
to live the refutation of it in some specific case, re- 
ceiving the answer in the diminution of life and 
well-being, according to the measure of the experi- 
ment ; so also may we test the reality of our power 
to intelligently influence events by becoming for a 
time mere spectators of them. The same experiment 
will do for both cases. 

We will have two philosophers, the one an idealist, 
the other a physical realist. They are walking upon 
the railway track, absorbed in discussion, when sud- 
denly they perceive an express train bearing down 
upon them. I challenge you, exclaims the realist, to 
demonstrate the unreality of the things of the exter- 
nal world by not leaving this track. And I chal- 
lenge you, returns the idealist, to demonstrate the 
truth of your belief that we have no power of intel- 



90 WHAT IS REALITY? 

ligently influencing events, by becoming a mere spec- 
tator of them and remaining where you are. For 
humanity's sake we will have it that our philoso- 
phers, though deeply attached to their special skep- 
ticisms, are yet more fond of life, and therefore that 
they withdraw in time to demonstrate the necessity 
of living the affirmative of that which they theoret- 
ically deny. 

But some one will say : " This is not philosophy at 
all, it is mere Philistinism. You have not untied the 
knot, you have cut it. You have not solved our dif- 
ficulty by reason, you have simply refused to reason. 
After many words, you have brought us back to the 
place whence we set out ; and as an answer to the 
question ' What is reality ? ' you offer us two contra- 
dictory statements which we must accept on peril of 
our lives." Now I cannot complain that this criti- 
cism is unjust, in view of what has hitherto been 
developed. It is very true that the test of reality 
offered is not a philosophical but a practical one. It 
is not addressed to reason. It is rather the knock- 
down arguments of facts, — an argument with which 
science, at least, cannot quarrel. We have not yet 
begun to philosophize. We have been seeking a 
foundation for philosophy in a substratum of real- 
ity ; and we have found it, where alone it can be 
found, in experience. But now we are ready to enter 
upon the justification of our acceptance of these two 
propositions from a rational point of view. 

To begin with, then, we deny altogether the affir- 
mation that the two aspects of reality in question 
are the proved contradictions of each other. At the 



THE ANSWER OF LIFE. 91 

beginning of this article we showed ivhy Mr. Spen- 
cer's test of- reality was impracticable ; and now I 
ask the reader to look a little further and see that 
the error that lurks in the " universal postulate " is 
also the underlying error of all the negations of 
physical realism. It was shown that it is impossible 
to have exhaustive, absolute truth except when we 
are dealing with pure abstractions ; and therefore 
that it is only within the realm of the formal sci- 
ences, like mathematics and logic, that we can have 
absolute agreements and contradictions. When we 
are dealing with concrete things and their relations 
to each other we are never in possession of anything 
more than partial truths. We have not fathomed, 
and cannot fathom, all the possibilities of anything. 
It is, therefore, continually happening to us that the 
discovery of new relations changes for us the homo- 
geneous into the heterogeneous, and the harmonious 
into the discordant. By the same means, also, our 
discords are transformed into harmonies, order is 
substituted for confusion, and agreements appear in 
the place of contradictions. 

We can never say that one concrete fact of experi- 
ence necessarily excludes another. For although we 
cannot harmonize them, it is always possible that 
new facts coming in between these two which are 
contrasted may show that what appear to be contra- 
dictory phenomena are in truth the complementary 
parts or functions of a many-sided reality, not fully 
known to us. As Lotze very truly says : " The word 
thing indicates, so far as known to us, nothing other 
than the performances which we expect from what 



92 WHAT IS REALITY? 

we call things as evidence of their reality." 1 But 
the performances of things are as manifold and as 
varied as their relations. Hence we may confidently 
affirm that the thing of our imaginations is never the 
absolutely real thing, though some of the relations 
which it sustains to us and to other things are truly 
known and stand as realities. 

So also when we come to classify these relations, 
linking them together in orderly combinations which 
we call laws, the result, no matter how broad in ex- 
tent, cannot be an exhaustive statement of reality, 
but only of certain aspects of it reduced to order. 
As Judge Stallo puts it : " A particular operation of 
thought never involves the entire complement of the 
known or knowable properties of a given object, but 
only such of them as belong to a definite class of re- 
lations. In mechanics, for instance, a body is con- 
sidered simply as a mass of determinate weight and 
volume (and in some cases figure), without reference 
to its other physical or chemical properties. In like 
manner each of the other departments of knowledge 
effects a classification of objects upon its own pecu- 
liar principles, thereby giving rise to different series 
of concepts in which each concept represents that at- 
tribute or group of attributes — that aspect of the 
object — which it is necessary, in view of the ques- 
tion in hand, to bring into view." 2 

From these considerations, Stallo argues, it is ap- 
parent that each of our concepts of a given object is 
a term or link in a special series or chain of abstrac- 

1 Microcosmus, vol. ii. p. 579. 

2 Concepts of Modern Physics, p. 134. 



THE ANSWER OF LIFE. 93 

tions ; and further, that these chains or series, which 
are innumerable, not only vary in kind, but are also 
divergent in direction, so that the scope and the im- 
port of any particular concept must always be de- 
pendent on the number and the nature of the rela- 
tions with reference to which the classification of 
objects has been effected. From this, also, it is clear 
that all our thoughts of things are fragmentary and 
symbolical representations of realities whose thorough 
comprehension, in any single mental act or series of 
acts, is impossible. 

These are general truths ; but the application of 
them to our problem is not difficult. We have two 
controversies with physical realism. First, on ac- 
count of the assumption that the mechanical realities 
of the world are the contradiction of its spiritual 
realities ; and, second, on account of the claim that 
one of these realities as genuine is able to suppress 
the other as spurious. The above general truths 
show us that both of these assumptions are errors, 
and that they have their root in one and the same 
misconception ; that is, the false idea that the human 
mind occupies such a central position with regard to 
the known elements of the universe that it is possi- 
ble for it to gather them up in a single series, or, in 
other words, organize them into one harmonious and 
logical whole. 

It is not difficult to see that the group of relations 
which yields the mechanical conception radiates from 
an entirely different centre from that which gives us 
the conception of the power of the human spirit to 
modify the mechanical order. The former regards 



94 WHAT IS BEAUTY* 

things in their relation to an abstract principle which 
we call energy. The latter regards things in their 
relation to an abstract principle which we call spirit. 
They cannot agree with each other, they cannot con- 
tradict each other. One cannot be the proof of the 
other, but no more can it be its disproof. They are 
on different planes ; and how many or how deep may 
be the strata of reality lying between these two we 
cannot guess. The unmistakable and all-important 
fact is that they coexist in experience. And the cir- 
cumstance that they cannot be brought into one, that 
we cannot understand how they are complementary, 
that they even appear to be contradictory, is not a 
matter for wonder to us. It is just what we ought 
to expect. 

It is what we ought to expect in view of that con- 
ception, accepted equally by theology and science, 
that the universe is an organic whole, dependent 
upon a central controlling principle or being. If it 
is assumed that, as viewed from this central position, 
.the cosmos presents the appearance of absolute order 
and perfect harmony, it follows, necessarily, that 
when viewed from an extremely one-sided position, 
treated as the centre, — a position like that occupied 
by the latest product of evolution, man, — the ap- 
pearance of things must be the reverse of harmo- 
nious. 

But, it may be objected, this proves, or rather as- 
sumes, too much. If we are so far removed, by rea- 
son of our position, from the possibility of grasping 
the harmony of the universe, how is it that we have 
been able to reduce so large a number of its ele- 






THE ANSWER OF LIFE. 95 

ments to harmony ? Instead of finding two great 
divisions of thought opposed to each other, we ought 
to detect innumerable discrepancies and impossibil- 
ities. This certainly seems a reasonable consider- 
ation, but it does not weaken our position. Our an- 
swer to it is that what we ought to find is just what 
we do find. Our experience, and even our science, 
is full of just such contrarieties as that which makes 
mental causation appear to be the antithesis of phy- 
sical causation ; and our basis for reality is not, in 
truth, twofold, but manifold. 

In any comprehensive structure of thought which 
we build for ourselves, we have to arch over not one 
space, but many spaces, whose depth we cannot 
fathom. How can motion be transferred from one 
body to another ? How can any one atom of matter 
act upon any other ? These questions are equally 
unanswerable with that which asks how mind can 
act upon matter. When we ignore these questions, 
taking the facts which they challenge for granted, 
this is not because everybody understands all about 
them, or because they are too simple to require an 
explanation, — but because physical science cannot 
touch them ; they are not in its plane of operations. 
And if it seems to us that science has made the prob- 
lem any more intelligible by such a phrase as the 
" homogeneity of matter," we are simply deceiving 
ourselves with words. We mistake a mere statement 
for an explanation. 

As Lotze remarks : " Though it needs but little 
study of physical science to teach us that all forms 
of action and reaction between substance and sub- 



96 WHAT IS BEALITY? 

stance are equally obscure, it has yet become a habit, 
hardly to be overcome, to look upon the mutual in- 
fluence of body and soul as a particular and excep- 
tional case, in which unfortunately, and contrary to 
our expectations, that will not become clear which 
in every example of merely physical action is per- 
fectly intelligible." 1 

But what shall we say of those great generaliza- 
tions of science that disclose the universality of cer- 
tain principles ? Does not the verification of a law 
like that of the attraction of gravitation, or that of 
the persistence of force, prove that we are capable of 
reaching the ultimate truth of the relations of things ? 
Does not every such law of universal application 
bring us nearer to the goal of a perfectly harmonized 
conception of the cosmos ? On the contrary, the ad- 
dition of each generalization increases the number of 
connected views of the universe that hold together 
when considered each by itself ; but which, as related 
to one another, refuse to be reconciled. 

As we have already seen, each one of these is a 
series of abstractions that regards only certain pecu- 
liar characteristics in the objects with which it deals. 
The farther we push any series of abstractions, there- 
fore, the more isolated is the result reached, — iso- 
lated both as regards all forms of concrete reality, 
and also as regards other extreme generalizations. 
The series of relations which it reduces to a law may 
be coextensive with the universe ; but the very fact 
that it is the outcome of the last results of abstrac- 
tion shuts this particular series up to itself. 
1 Microcosmus, vol. i. p. 278. 



THE ANSWER OF LIFE. 97 

This may seem to the reader to be a harmless 
assault of purely metaphysical reasoning upon the 
firmly-compacted, deeply-laid foundations of physical 
science. We have heard so much about the exact- 
ness of modern science, about its carefulness to criti- 
cise and prove every step, and we have been told so 
many times that it is a perfectly consistent and har- 
monious whole, that an attempt to prove, by ab- 
stract reasoning, that it ought to be disjointed and 
self-contradictory may seem worthy of a smile rather 
than serious attention. But here, as once before, 
our answer is that just what ought to be, for the jus- 
tification of our reasoning, is. Modern science is 
not a consistent whole. It is self-contradictory at 
its foundations. Each series of abstractions which 
gives rise to what we call a law of nature, though it 
may be a wonder of precision in itself, is hopelessly 
in conflict with other generalizations of science that 
seem to be equally well-grounded. 

This has been set forth with startling clearness in 
the volume * from which I have already quoted ; and 
though it is impossible, in short compass, to produce 
the impression that results from a careful study of it, 
I will, for the sake of illustration, try to set before 
the reader some of the conflicts of thought which it 
exposes to view. 

Fundamental to the mechanical theory of the uni- 
verse is the assumption that the ultimate atoms of 
mass are equal and perfectly homogeneous. This is 
a corollary from the proposition that all the diver- 
sities in nature are caused by motion. But over 

1 Concepts of Modern Physics, by J. B. Stallo. 



98 WHAT IS REALITY 1 

against this most essential part of the mechanical 
theory we have to place a fundamental law of chem- 
istry, - — the so-called law of Avogadro, or Ampere, 
which, we are told by Professor Cooke, " now holds 
the same place in chemistry that the law of gravita- 
tion does in astronomy." It is as follows : Equal 
volumes of all substances, when in the state of gas, 
and under like conditions, contain the same number 
of molecules. 1 

It follows from this that the weights of the mole- 
cules must be in proportion to the specific gravities 
of the gases. But the specific gravities of the gases 
are different. Having, therefore, different weights 
to apportion among the same number of molecules in 
different gases, we are forced to the conclusion that 
the molecules of one gas weigh more than those 
of another. As thus stated, it might appear that 
this difference is true only of compound chemical 
molecules. But as some substances are monatomic, 
and some others have molecules consisting of the 
same number of atoms, it follows that the ultimate 
atoms themselves are of different weights. Here, 
then, we have a contradiction surely not less startling 
than that which makes the doctrine of the "per- 
sistence of force " the contradiction of the belief in 
mental causation. But this does not stand alone. 

A second fundamental assumption of the mechan- 
ical theory is that the elementary units of mass are 
absolutely hard and inelastic. This is at the same 
time a necessary postulate of the atomo-mechanical 
theory, and a necessary antithesis of the doctrine of 

1 The New Chemistry, by Professor J. P. Cooke, p. 13. 1888. 



THE ANSWER OF LIFE. 99 

the conservation of energy. Elasticity cannot be a 
characteristic of simple atoms, because all elasticity 
involves motion of parts. The concept elastic atom 
is, Professor Witwer affirms, "a contradiction in 
terms." But, on the other hand, Sir William Thom- 
son says " we are forbidden, by the modern theory of 
the conservation of energy, to assume inelasticity, or 
anything short of perfect elasticity, of the ultimate 
molecules, whether of ultra-mundane or mundane 
matter." 

The necessity here referred to is imposed upon 
science by what is known as the kinetic theory of 
gases. In the light of this theory a gaseous body is 
a swarm of innumerable solid particles incessantly 
moving about with different velocities in rectilinear 
paths of all conceivable directions, the velocities and 
directions being changed by mutual encounters at 
intervals, which are short in comparison with ordi- 
nary standards of duration, but indefinitely long as 
compared with the duration of the encounters. Now, 
if these particles were wholly inelastic, or imper- 
fectly elastic, the motion must soon come to an end. 

Stallo draws attention to the fact that distinguished 
advocates of the kinetic hypothesis have taxed their 
ingenuity in the search of methods for the extrica- 
tion of the mechanical theory from the dilemma in 
which it is thus involved. But after parsing in 
review the most notable efforts made in this direc- 
tion, he reaches the following conclusion : | ;' The dif- 
ficulty, then, appears to be inherent and insoluble. 
There is no method known to physical science which 
enables it to renounce the assumption of the perfect 



100 WHAT IS REALITY? 

elasticity of the particles whereof ponderable bodies 
and their hypothetical imponderable- envelopes are 
said to be composed, however clearly this assumption 
conflicts with one of the essential requirements of the 
mechanical theory." 1 

Again, according to the mechanical theory, motion, 
like mass, is indestructible and unchangeable ; it 
cannot vanish and reappear. There is, therefore, 
no such thing as potential energy. All energy is, in 
reality, kinetic. But as in the former case, " modern 
science peremptorily refuses its assent. It asserts 
that all, or nearly all, physical changes in the uni- 
verse are mutual conversions of kinetic and potential 
energies ; that energy is incessantly stored as virtual 
power and restored as actual motion." To make this 
clear, our author briefly reviews the history of the 
doctrine of the conservation of energy, and shows 
that it has been, in effect, a progressive abandon- 
ment of the proposition that all potential energy is, 
in reality, kinetic. 

These examples are, perhaps, enough to illustrate 
our point. But I will adduce one other, which may 
prove the most impressive of all, because of our 
familiarity with the law involved. There can hardly 
be any question as to the preeminence, among scien- 
tific discoveries, of that one of Sir Isaac Newton 
generally ^called the law of the attraction of gravi- 
tation. In one view this law may be said to be the 
central principle of modern science. Chemistry, as 
a science of weights, is built upon it as really as 
astronomy and physics. What, then, shall we make 
1 Page 51. 



THE ANSWER OF LIFE. 101 

of the fact that it is, in another aspect, the absolute 
contradiction of the fundamental postulates of scien- 
tific thought ? — that it refuses all classification with 
other known physical forces as absolutely as the con- 
cept spirit? 

A postulate of the mechanical theory universally 
accepted by physicists has been that all physical 
action is by impact. The elementary units of mass 
are absolutely inert, therefore a mass can have mo- 
tion induced in it only by contact with another mass. 
In short, there are in nature no pulls, but only thrusts. 
All force is not merely vis impressa, but vis a tergo. 
There cannot be any such thing, therefore, as action 
at a distance. The reason for this is set forth sub- 
stantially as follows by Professor Challis. " There 
is no other kind of force than pressure by contact of 
one body with another. This hypothesis is made on 
the principle of admitting no fundamental ideas that 
are not referable to sensation and experience. It is 
true that we see bodies obeying the influence of an 
external force, as when a body descends toward the 
earth by the action of gravity ; so far as the sense of 
sight informs us we do not in such cases perceive 
either the contact or the presence of another body. 
But we have also the sense of touch or of pressure 
by contact, for instance, of the hand with another 
body ; and we feel in ourselves the power of causing 
motion by such pressure. The consciousness of this 
power and the sense of touch give a distinct idea, 
such as all the world understands and acts upon, as 
to how a body may be moved. And the rule of phi- 
losophy which makes personal sensation and experi- 



102 WHAT IS REALITY? 

ence the basis of scientific knowledge, as they are the 
basis of the knowledge that regulates the common 
transactions of life, forbids recognizing any other 
mode than this. When, therefore, a body is caused 
to move without appareut contact and pressure of 
another body, it must still be concluded that the 
pressing body, although invisible, exists ; unless we 
are prepared to admit that there are physical oper- 
ations which are and ever will be incomprehensible 
to us." i 

This aspect of the law of gravitation attracted 
great attention when it was first formulated, and 
called out the severest criticisms and opposition from 
Newton's contemporaries. " It is interesting," Stallo 
remarks, " to note the energy with which the philo- 
sophers and mathematicians of his day protested 
against the assumption of physical action at a dis- 
tance. Huygens did not hesitate to say that 'New- 
ton's principle of attraction appeared to him absurd/ 
Leibnitz called it ' an incorporeal and inexplicable 
power.' John Bernoulli denounced the two supposi- 
tions of an attractive faculty and a perfect void as 
revolting to minds accustomed to receiving no prin- 
ciples in physics save those which are incontestable 
and evident." Among later physicists, Euler ob- 
served that the action of gravity must be due either 
to the intervention of a spirit or to that of some 
subtle material medium escaping the perception of 
our senses; and his rival, D'Alembert, classified 
gravity as one of the causes productive of motion, 
whose real nature is to us entirely unknown, in con- 
1 Concepts of Modern Physics, p. 56. 



THE ANSWER OF LIFE. 



103 



tradistinction to action by impact, of which we have 
a clear mechanical conception. 

This contrariety between the doctrine of gravita- 
tion and the accepted principles of physics was as 
clearly seen by Newton as by any of his critics; 
and he repeatedly and emphatically disowned the 
implications which his formula seemed to involve. 
He carefully explained that the force which urges 
bodies in their central approach was to him a purely 
mathematical concept, involving no consideration of 
real and primary physical causes. " It is inconceiv- 
able," he says, " that inanimate brute matter should, 
without the mediation of something else which is not 
material, operate upon and affect other matter, with- 
out mutual contact. . . . That gravity should be 
innate, inherent, and essential to matter, so that one 
body may act upon another at a distance, through a 
vacuum, without the mediation of anything else by 
and through which their action may be conveyed 
from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity 
that I believe no man, who has in philosophical mat- 
ters a competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall 
into it. Gravity must be caused by an agent acting 
constantly according to certain laws ; but whether 
this agent be material or immaterial, I have left to 
the consideration of my readers." 1 In another con- 
nection he says : " The reason of these properties of 
gravity I have not as yet been able to deduce ; and 
I frame no hypotheses." 

Have later physicists made any advance upon this 
position? In one sense they have, for they have 

1 Concepts of Modern Physics, p. 54. 



104 WHAT IS REALITY? 

made many hypotheses. In some of these gravita- 
tion is referred to the wave motion of an elastic in- 
terstellar and interatomic fluid similar to, or identi- 
cal with, the luminiferous ether ; but the criticism 
of Arago is considered fatal to these. It is briefly 
summed up as follows : " If attraction is the result 
of the impulsion of a fluid, its action must employ a 
finite time in traversing the immense spaces which 
separate the celestial bodies." This is fatal, because 
it is demonstrable that the action of gravity is in- 
stantaneous. There have been also impact theories. 
But the only one of these seriously discussed by 
modern physicists and astronomers, that of Le Sage, 
has been conclusively set aside by the criticism of 
Clerk Maxwell. 

We are brought, then, to this : the broadest and 
most fruitful generalization of scientific thought, the 
fundamental law of cosmical significance, has to be 
stated in language which involves the contradiction 
of the mechanical theory. " Every particle of mat- 
ter in the universe," it says, " attracts every other 
particle with a force directly proportioned to the 
mass of the attracting particle, and inversely to the 
square of the distance between them." Without 
this idea of attraction, — this conception of one 
body acting upon another at a distance, the above 
law could never have been discovered by Newton. It 
never could have been imagined by any one. When 
we state it, when we think it, we are just as much in 
conflict with the mechanical conception of things as 
when we think of ourselves as free agents ; and 
when philosophy builds upon this latter conception 



THE ANSWER OF LIFE. 105 

as a reality it has the indorsement of reason no less 
than science has it when building on the law of the 
attraction of gravitation. In other words, the idea 
of mental causation as related to the idea of mechan- 
ical causation presents no exceptional difficulties. 

The emphasis that has been laid upon the conflict 
of these two ideas belongs, then, not to this age but 
to one of narrower outlooks. It had its rise in the 
infancy of science, when the two great generaliza- 
tions of which mind and mechanism are the expres- 
sion faced each other in solitary grandeur. But the 
progress of science has broken up this duality. For, 
instead of throwing the whole weight of its authority 
on the mechanical side, as physical realism assumes, 
it has in reality brought to light the manifold antag- 
onisms that, hitherto unperceived, lurked within the 
concept mechanism. Each great generalization, as 
it has taken definite form, has declared itself as a 
more or less independent aspect of the reality of 
things. It has contributed one more evidence to 
support the view that the study of the external world 
tends not to the unification of our knowledge, but 
to the enlargement of its area and to the multipli- 
cation of the points of view from which its reality 
must be contemplated. 

In the words of one who, both from the side of 
science and of philosophy, has made a profound 
study of this problem : " By nothing but by a fatal 
confidence in its own infallibility can science be led 
so far astray as to attach its knowledge of complex 
series of phenomena by preference to the fewest pos- 
sible axioms, or to the slender thread of a single 



106 WHAT IS REALITY? 

principle, which causes the whole to fall if it gives 
way. Its labor will be more wisely directed if, in- 
stead of raising its structure on the sharp edge of a 
single fundamental view, and performing the mar- 
velous feat of achieving the greatest possible insta- 
bility by the most recondite means, it looks out for 
the broadest basis on which to build ; and, starting 
modestly, traces the given facts to the proximate 
grounds of explanation required by their distinctly 
recognized peculiarities." * 

As to the rationality, then, of holding beliefs with 
regard to the world that are apparently destructive 
of each other, we reach a conclusion that may be 
summarized as follows: Since we are unable to 
penetrate to the essential reality of the world by 
analyzing its parts, and since, as a whole of vast 
complexity, it far transcends the range of our com- 
prehension ; therefore, it is reasonable to reject any 
system which professes to deduce all our knowledge 
from a single scientific principle. It is reasonable 
to say of such a system that its very completeness 
and exclusiveness is its own condemnation. And, 
on the other hand, it is reasonable to believe that we 
make our nearest approach to reality when we enter- 
tain as real a plurality of principles, or aspects of 
the world, which we are not able directly to combine 
into a harmonious whole. 

The bearing of this conclusion upon the question 
of our higher beliefs will be discussed in the next 
chapter. 

1 Microcosmus, vol. i. p. 271. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE THING-IN-ITSELF. 

It has, perhaps, occurred to the reader that the 
argument used in the preceding chapter bears a 
strong resemblance to that too familiar form of 
moral justification sometimes called " leveling down." 
When a man finds himself utterly without excuse 
for his own conduct, it is still possible for him to 
demonstrate that his neighbor is no better than him- 
self. We have labored to show that modern science 
abounds in assumptions that are as irreconcilable in 
their conflict as any of those forced upon us* by prac- 
tical experience. How, it may be asked, does this 
help matters ? We entered upon our inquiry with 
the hope of finding a rational basis for our higher 
beliefs; but does not the foregoing argument, in- 
stead of bringing us nearer to the desired goal, push 
us in the opposite direction ? Does it not, so far as 
it proves anything, prove that the reality of things 
is unknowable ? 

This is not a question to be lightly passed over. 
The word agnosticism represents a most powerful 
current of thought in our day, not the less signifi- 
cant because, in the great majority of cases, it is of 
the nature of an undertow. The rapidity of our 
progress in knowledge is, of itself, most unsettling. 



108 WHAT IS REALITY? 

The necessity of continually changing our ideas 
gradually begets in us the feeling that all things are 
subject to change, — that the reality of to-day may 
at any moment pass into the illusion of to-morrow. 
The history of science in the past is prophetic of its 
future. Looking back from the vantage ground that 
we occupy we can see that the exploded theories of 
the present generation were the verities of the one 
before it ; and when we ask ourselves the question, 
has science now reached a resting-place ? we have to 
answer that it was never farther from it ; that it is 
advancing with a greater rapidity than ever before ; 
that hypotheses are shorter-lived than they used to 
be, less confidently held, more quickly modified, more 
easily superseded. 

Under such circumstances it does not require any 
deep philosophy of the abstract sort to incline a man, 
who enters into the thought of his time, to skepti- 
cism. We may even say that, so far as science it- 
self is concerned, skepticism is the normal and neces- 
sary attitude of mind. To be receptive is to be, in 
a measure, skeptical. But a tendency of this kind, 
emanating from science, may be strongly reinforced 
and accentuated by an abstract philosophy ; and it 
so happens that we have just this combination to 
contend with in our time. Kant's philosophy, as we 
have already seen, has worked mainly as a leaven of 
agnosticism. His positive reconstructions of belief 
have remained almost a dead letter, while his de- 
structive criticism has been abundantly fruitful. 

As a result, we have two leading schools of skepti- 
cism, — the English half-way school, represented by 



THE THIN G-1N -ITSELF. 109 

Mr. Spencer, and the thorough-going pessimistic 
school of Schopenhauer and Von Hartmann. The 
former is optimistic, simply because it is inconsist- 
ent, — because it refuses to apply to all our know- 
ledge the criticism that it finds so effective for the 
demolition of one half of it. We have shown, in the 
" Answer of Objective Analysis," that such discrim- 
ination is purely arbitrary ; that it is without foun- 
dation either in experience or in reason. But this 
does not appear to its advocates. They call them- 
selves realists ; and while speaking much about the 
proneness of the human mind to illusions, and the 
falseness of some of its fundamental conceptions, 
they at the same time proclaim to the world a great 
philosophical discovery. Reality, they seem to say, 
which, in the light of science, is rapidly disappearing 
from much of our knowledge, may yet be retained 
and set upon a sure basis by limiting it to one class 
of our ideas. But we have only to cross the Channel 
to find a skepticism of a very different sort, — more 
thorough-going, more consistent, and, it is unneces- 
sary to say, more disheartening. 

The assumption made by a universally destructive 
skepticism is this. Whenever it can be shown that 
a belief does not represent absolute and final truth, 
it is proved thereby to be an illusion. Working on 
this assumption, the pessimistic philosophers reduce 
the whole world of sensible appearances, as well as 
all man's convictions about his own personality, to 
illusion. Consciousness is a perpetual fountain of 
lies, — a generator of ever- varying, but never-ceasing 
hallucinations which keep man forever on the tire- 



110 WHAT IS REALITY f 

some treadmill of striving, in the hope of a happi- 
ness that he can never achieve. The desire to live 
and to become is therefore the great evil of the 
world ; and the one hope of humanity is to escape 
from consciousness, and so from all the painful ex- 
periences that it entails. 

An easy descent into this logical, uncompromising 
form of skepticism may seem to have been prepared 
by our argument. For if this is sound, does it not 
prove that our knowledge is unstable, that it is rela- 
tive, that it is fragmentary ? But the conclusions of 
skepticism, let us observe, are not the necessary out- 
come of these premises. Agnosticism is based upon 
an assumption that stands quite by itself, — the as- 
sumption, namely, that because cur knowledge is 
modifiable, relative, and fragmentary, it is therefore 
useless as a guide to transcendent realities. This 
position I am prepared to contest ; and in what fol- 
lows I shall try to show that our knowledge is suffi- 
ciently stable, sufficiently positive, and sufficiently 
homogeneous to enable us to construct a reasonable 
and effective theory of the meaning of the world and 
of the value of our lives in it. 

First, then, let us consider it as unstable. It may 
be said, in criticism of our four fundamental postu- 
lates of reality, that they have reference only to the 
least mutable elements of an exceedingly mutable 
class of things. Any structure that we may build 
upon them, therefore, will not be founded on the 
everlasting rock, but only on the most permanent or 
least variable part of an ever -shifting sandbank. 
Their unsatisfactory nature appears the moment we 



THE THING-IN-1TSELF. Ill 

attempt to adjust particular things to them. It is 
easy to affirm with confidence the reality of the 
things of the external world ; but when it comes to 
saying in what the reality of this or that object con- 
sists, we are at a loss for an answer. We simply 
enumerate different relations which it sustains to 
ourselves or to other objects, and when we come to 
the end of our list we have to add a mental et cetera. 
We know that we have not exhausted the subject, 
and we know, further, that the discovery of new 
relations frequently modifies and sometimes even re- 
verses the ideas of the object hitherto held. So also 
we affirm without hesitation that the mind has the 
power of modifying the natural course of events. 
But it is impossible for us to say in regard to any 
given action just what part of it may be ascribed to 
purposiveness or free will, and how much must be 
set down to the agency of coercive influences. Sci- 
ence has constantly worked for the limitation of our 
belief in free agency ; and the area within which it 
exercises control seems very much larger to some 
men than to others. 

All this is very true. Our propositions do not 
accurately define where reality leaves off and where 
illusion begins in anything. They affirm an element 
of reality in certain great classes of our experiences, 
without denying that in each of these there has been 
a deposit of error accompanying the deposit of truth ; 
and that a progressive elimination of this error is 
possible. But our knowledge is not nearly so unsta- 
ble as the above criticism implies. Experience itself 
testifies to its possession of certain invariable, uni- 



112 WHAT IS REALITY? 

versal, and permanent elements as distinctly as it 
does to the inconstancy or transitional character of 
other elements. Why there should be such a differ- 
ence in these, as that one should appear to be an 
essential and vital part of experience, and another 
not so, is a pertinent question ; and though the situ- 
ation would not be in the least altered if no answer 
to it could be given, yet it is a great intellectual ad- 
vance when our faith in that which appears as neces- 
sary is supplemented by a reason, even though that 
reason should be little more than an analogy. 

The question asked in such a case usually takes 
this form, — Is the difference, which is said to exist 
between the so-called permanent elements of experi- 
ence and the great mass that is transitional, a differ- 
ence of kind or only a difference of degree f We 
may safely say that it is both ; for differences of 
kind, all the world over, seem to be based upon dif- 
ferences of degree, and often the former emerge 
from the latter by such gradations as to make it im- 
possible for us to designate the exact point at which 
kind number one ceases, and kind number two be- 
gins. Human experience is ranged on a finely grad- 
uated scale. It varies in its breadth and value from 
the novel, uninterpreted, unclassified sensation of 
the present hour to the substratum of common, uni- 
versally accepted fact, upon which the human race 
has been building from its first beginnings. 

We might illustrate it to the eye by a pjrramid, 
each successive step of which carries us higher, but 
at the same time lands us on a plane of diminished 
area. Or, better still, while our attention is turned 



THE THING-1N-ITSELF. 113 

to degrees of permanence, may we refer to the illus- 
tration of a tree, the trunk and main roots of which 
represent the essential stable members of experience, 
while the smaller branches, leaves, and rootlets cor- 
respond to all that is changeable and transitional. 
And as in the tree the permanence of certain parts 
has been determined by conflict with environment, 
so also in experience there is a never-ending conflict, 
by means of which all that is of temporary value is 
either destroyed or transformed, while those mem- 
bers that are essential to the maintenance of life and 
growth become fixed in their general form and char- 
acteristics. 

The four propositions which I have likened to the 
woody stem and main roots of the tree of human ex- 
perience are at the same time the oldest and most 
permanent members of it, just because human ex- 
perience could neither begin nor continue without 
them. They sprung into existence almost simul- 
taneously, as the result of conscious human effort in 
a world where to live is to act ; and the conviction of 
their truth and immutability has become more firmly 
integrated in human consciousness by every subse- 
quent action and reaction between man and his en- 
vironment. 

We may even carry our analogy one step farther 
without straining it. For as the trunk of the tree is 
made up of a multitude of hardened cells that were 
once plastic, so these general abstract propositions 
of ours are the result of innumerable separate con- 
victions that have sprung up in connection with 
particular things. And these particular convictions, 



114 WHAT IS REALITY? 

though ranged, as has been said, on a finely grad- 
uated scale, may yet be divided into two classes, 
one of which is continually passing into the other 
just as growing cells become transformed into rigid 
ones. The one class we may call the convictions of 
persuasion, the other the convictions of coercion. It 
is not always easy to say where persuasion ends and 
coercion begins ; but the latter word expresses a 
characteristic of many of our beliefs with regard to 
particular things that may be treated as final, 
while the former describes a still larger number 
that are not final but tentative. But many of this 
class are almost as firmly ensconced in our organized 
beliefs as those which from the beginning have been 
coercive. 

So much for differences of kind and degree. 
Now let us turn our attention to another aspect of 
the charge of instability. It grows out of the as- 
sumption that what we call our established know- 
ledge is radically changed by the constant accessions 
that it receives. The impression that it is so easily 
obtains a hold upon the imagination, because our 
minds are much more alive to the novel elements of 
experience than they are to the old familiar ones. 
But as matter of fact, the new knowledge rarely 
displaces or even essentially disturbs the old, but 
ranges itself peacefully alongside. This may seem 
a rash statement to make in view of all the revo- 
lutions signalized by modern thought. But it will 
require, I think, only a little reflection to be con- 
vinced that the number of discoveries that necessi- 
tate any great readjustment of our thought bears a 



THE THING-IN-ITSELF. 115 

very small proportion to the innumerable multitude 
that fall naturally into place, amplifying and illumi- 
nating the knowledge we already possess. 

The science of chemistry, for instance, is founded 
on the analysis of substances that appear to our 
ordinary experience as final realities. It separates 
these, in some cases, into a great number of diverse 
realities; but this discovery of complexity and di- 
versity of elements does not change the reality of the 
original substance, as known to our uses. Chemis- 
try now treats something over seventy substances as 
final ; yet it knows that any day some of these may 
be analyzed and their names erased from the chemi- 
cal peerage. But if this should happen, the sub- 
stance analyzed would continue to be the same re- 
ality that it has always been ; we know something 
more about it, but the new knowledge does not dis- 
place the old. As Professor Cooke remarks : " Were 
a process discovered to-morrow by which a new sub- 
stance could be produced from the material of sul- 
phur, we should hail at once the discovery of a new 
element, and sulphur would be banished forever 
from the list of elementary substances. Yet the 
qualities of sulphur would not be changed thereby. 
It would still be used for making sulphuric acid and 
bleaching old bonnets, as if nothing had happened." 

It is not otherwise when the process is from the 
relatively simple to the complex. The substance 
glycerine, first known to science as a softening and 
soothing principle, is subsequently discovered to be 
capable of being transformed, by combination with 
other substances, into a highly explosive and most 



116 WHAT IS REALITY? 

destructive principle. But the milder moods of our 
old friend are not made thereby less real or less ac- 
ceptable. Even in cases where there is a complete rev- 
olution in our conception of natural processes; our old 
knowledge is affected far less than it appears to be. 

Let us take, for instance, the discovery that the 
planet upon which we live revolves about the sun, 
and not, as was for ages believed, the sun about it. 
This reversal of our scientific prepossessions did not 
in the least disarrange our former practical beliefs 
with regard to the relations which the sun sustains 
to us and to our world. Notwithstanding our new 
knowledge the sun still rises and sets for us, and we 
order all our lives with relation to it in the same 
way as formerly. That is to spy, our unscientific, 
experimentally formed ideas with regard to the sun 
were substantially true. They represented very 
real relations. Even astronomy itself was affected 
far less than has been generally supposed. The 
Ptolemaic system was just as correct as a basis for 
astronomical calculations as the more truthful and 
simple one that superseded it ; and the reason why 
it was so is to be found in the fact that the relations 
upon which it was based were real relations. 

This brings us to a very important consideration, 
— one that we shall have occasion to emphasize at 
a subsequent point in our argument, namely, that 
most of the revolutions in our thought occur in the 
region of scientific hypotheses. They are not, there- 
fore, worthy the name of revolutions. They are 
rather transformations, the changing phases of be- 
liefs that are in the formative state. It is only our 



THE THING-IN-ITSELF. 117 

short-sightedness that ever regards these hypotheses 
as established and final ; and their remoteness, for 
the most, part, from our ordinary experimental liv- 
ing renders their actual modifying influence on ac- 
cepted reality far less than it appears, to our won- 
der-loving imaginations, to be. In opposition, then, 
to the criticism that our knowledge is too unstable 
to afford a foundation for reality, we affirm that 
there is a permanent and reliable substratum to our 
knowledge, and that reality, of a progressive and 
modifiable kind, is within our reach. 

But now we have to enter on the defense of our 
knowledge from a more subtile kind of attack. It 
is said that all our knowledge is relative, and there- 
fore of no use as a guide to reality. This objection 
is radical ; and, furthermore, it requires our careful 
attention, because it carries with it a most imposing 
weight of authority and respectability. The greatest 
names in philosophy are associated with it, and the 
consensus of generations of eminent thinkers has, 
in the past, made its non-reception stand as a sure 
sign of metaphysical incapacity. But metaphysics, 
though often disrespectfully alluded to in these days 
as a dead science, is attesting its vitality, if in no 
other way, by rising up to overthrow this tyrant of 
its own imposing. Let us see what the doctrine is, 
and how it may be met. We will take the least 
abstruse statement of it first. 

Man, it is said, represents only one special kind of 
intelligence ; the degree and the quality of his know- 
ledge are dependent upon his physical organization. 
He has certain faculties, more or less perfectly de- 



118 WHAT IS REALITY t 

veloped by his conflict with environment ; but these 
faculties might have been other than they are. In- 
dividual men are so different from each other that 
they may be said to live in different worlds ; and we 
know from the examination both of the structure 
and of the behavior of other animals that they pos- 
sess faculties very different from ours. However 
useful our knowledge of the world may be to us, 
therefore, it is not the real thing. It is not the 
knowledge of the world that a mind having faculties 
coextensive with all the modes of being in the uni- 
verse would possess. As Kant has said, man can 
know nothing more of the nature of objects than his 
own mode of perceiving them, which is peculiar to 
himself. 

The reply to this is that completeness of know- 
ledge is not claimed for man by any one, least of 
all by those who worship a God of infinite attri- 
butes. All that we affirm is that our understanding 
of things is correct as far as it goes, — that it pre- 
sents us with realities as related to our present state 
of being. Since we are progressive beings, our 
knowledge must necessarily be subject to modifica- 
tion and amplification ; but there is no reason to an- 
ticipate that the fundamental assumptions by which 
we live will ever be overthrown. There is every 
reason, on the contrary, to believe that all our direct 
knowledge of relations is true. Are we not our- 
selves a part of that universe that we seek to know ? 
If that universe is a connected and orderly whole, as 
we believe, if it is governed by laws, how should it 
come about that our responses to environment should 
result in falsehood ? 



THE miNG-IN-ITSELF. 119 

When I know one single relation which a part of 
this universe sustains to my intelligence, I am cer- 
tainly acquainted with one reality ; and when I 
know how two or more of these parts are related to 
each other in my intelligence, I become possessed of 
another reality more complex than the first. As I 
continue to add to the number and complexity of 
these relations, my knowledge, as a whole, becomes 
greatly enlarged and modified ; but the modification 
consists in the discovery that what I had taken to 
be the whole expression of reality was only a partial 
expression of it. My knowledge, regarded as com- 
plete, has been discredited, but it has not altogether 
disappeared. Most of our illusions are the result of 
treating a single relation, or a given set of relations, 
as if they were the final expression of reality. 

But the disciple of Kant may return to the con- 
troversy with the reminder that the deliverances of 
the human understanding, based upon experience, 
contradict each other, and thereby demonstrate their 
falseness as representations of a world assumed to 
be an orderly whole, without flaws and without con- 
tradictions. 

It is just at this point that the difference between 
our way of accounting for the contrarieties of reason 
and Kant's way can be clearly set forth. It may 
have seemed to the reader that we had wholly gone 
over to Kant when, on page ninety-two of this book, 
it was eaid^ " We may confidently affirm that the 
thing of our imaginations is never the absolutely 
real thing." But there is a wide difference between 
holding, as Kant does, that our knowledge must ever 



120 WHAT IS REALITY? 

remain " toto coelo different from the cognition of an 
object in itself," and holding, as we do, that our 
knowledge is only a partial expression of reality, but 
true as far as it goes. It can hardly be questioned, 
I think, that the latter account of the matter is a 
sufficient explanation of the contrarieties of experi- 
ence. The history of science presents us with a mul- 
titude of instances in which supposed contradictions 
have been reconciled by the discovery of new rela- 
tions. I will cite only one. 

When Copernicus astonished the world with the 
announcement of his apparently wild hypothesis that 
the earth revolves daily upon its own axis, and that 
the dwellers on the other side of the planet have 
their feet toward our feet, and their heads pointing 
in the direction which to us is down, it was a suffi- 
cient refutation to say — impossible, for in that case 
there would be no dwellers on the earth. To the 
imagination of that day it was clear that every mov- 
able thing on the upper side of the planet must ne- 
cessarily fall off on reaching the under side. It was 
only when the conception was grasped that all our 
notions of up and down are not absolute, not an ex- 
haustive expression of reality, but wholly relative to 
the centre of the earth, that the impossible was seen 
to be possible. Then it became clear that what had 
seemed to be absolutely up was just as really, from 
another point of view, absolutely down, there being, 
in fact, no reference in the affirmation to absolute 
space, but only the expression of our relation to one 
point in it. 

Extending the idea of up and down, we are forced 



TEE TEING-IN-ITSELF. 121 

to the conclusion that up, as related to the centre of 
our planet, must be down to one contemplating the 
earth from the sun ; and in view of a more remote 
centre, about which our solar system revolves, we 
must again reverse the application of the terms. 

Just so it seems to me with regard to the contra- 
diction that exists between the relations made known 
to our subjective experience and those which appear 
to us to exist between things independently of us. 
Cosmic laws come to us as radiations from some re- 
mote centre, not directly made known to our experi- 
ence ; relations, they seem to be, that embrace and 
include everything within themselves. But for all 
that, there is no reason for concluding, as Kant does, 
that the relations that radiate in an opposite direc- 
tion from the known centre of the self-conscious ego 
are false. The centre of the ego is not the centre of 
the universe, but it is a centre — a centre of reality 
and power. It cannot be removed from the realm 
of actualities by the truth of cosmic laws any more 
than the fact of the attracting power of the earth 
can be wiped out by the fact of the attracting power 
of the sun. The harmony of the universe is main- 
tained by the interaction of different centres. 

But now, if all we have claimed under this head 
be granted, we have met only one of the objections 
that may be urged against our knowledge on the 
score of its relativity. Suppose, it may be said, we 
do know relations truthfully, the relations of things 
are not tMngs. Kant and Sir William Hamilton 
agree in saying that the very act of knowing is a 
drawing of things out of their absolute reality into 



122 WHAT IS BEALITY? 

relation to the subject knowing them, The essential 
being of things must, therefore, be eternally hid from 
us. We cannot know anything as it is in itself. 

The impossibility here spoken of, let us observe, 
is one that does not attach specially to the human 
understanding, as limited. It is an imperfection 
that belongs to the process of knowing as knowing. 
This is explicitly stated by Hamilton in the follow- 
ing passage : " We may suppose existence to have a 
thousand modes ; but these thousand modes are all to 
us as zero, unless we possess faculties accommodated 
to their apprehension. But were the number of 
our faculties coextensive with the modes of being, — 
had we for each of these thousand modes a separate 
organ competent to make it known to us, — still 
would our whole knowledge be, as it is at present, 
only of the relative. Of existence absolutely and in 
itself we should then be as ignorant as we are now." 1 

When we have reached this point, it is natural 
that we should try hard to form some notion of the 
value of these " things in themselves," — things that 
exist forever apart from all intelligence. It is a per- 
tinent question to ask, Are they worth knowing ? 
Are they of any account in the great universe of re- 
ality ? Our respect is ordinarily accorded to things 
only as they make themselves felt, or as they are 
deemed capable of making themselves felt. But in 
the case of these absolute existences that can never 
reach us any more than we can reach them, what 
ground can there be for abasing ourselves and de- 
spising our knowledge in view of them ? They are, 
1 Metaphysics, vol. i. p. 153. 



THE THIXG-IX-ITSELF. 123 

if they are, for us as if they had no existence. "We 
cannot love them, we cannot hate them, we cannot 
obey or disobey them ; nor can we be moved to hu- 
mility, or to reverence, or to religion in our contem- 
plation of them. May we not. then, venture to ask 
the question, Are they, or is it — the thin g-in-it self 
— anything ? 

There are more ways than one of looking at this 
fundamental question. From one point of view, that 
of an outside spectator, it seems easy enough to an- 
swer it in the negative. A time-honored ontological 
maxim tells us that M the reality of things can be as- 
certained only by divesting them of their relations." 
According to this view, essence or substance was 
conceived of as existing at the centre of each group 
of phenomena ; and this, the metaphysician held, 
could be discovered in no other way than by finding 
a residuum when all phenomena, or existence-in-rela- 
tion, had been analyzed away. Xow. as no residuum 
is ever discoverable at the end of such a process, the 
inference is that the thing-in-itself is a mere creature 
of the imagination. Mav we not. with He°;el. affirm 
that " pure being is pure nothing " ? — that this idea 
of a distinct reality, different from the manifesta- 
tions of reality, is simply an idea ? Things, we will 
say. are really groups of relations which we are able 
to regard as real entities only by postulating a centre 
to which each of the separate relations is referred : 
but this centre is, like the mathematical point, no- 
thing more than a convenience of thought. 

With this understanding, then, let us reinvest the 
term essential being, and use it to signify the sum 



124 WHAT IS REALITY f 

of the real relations of anything. In this sense the 
thing-in-itself is not the antithesis of the knowable, 
or of that which exists in relations. It is, on the con- 
trary, the fullness of all things in the unity of all 
their relations. It is the completeness of knowledge. 
But it is unattainable by us, because our knowledge, 
though progressive, is ever incomplete. 

A similar view of the case as related to the words 
noumenon and phenomenon is very clearly stated by 
the author of " Scottish Philosophy." * " It is true," 
he says, " that we do not know the whole nature of 
anything ; and the term noumenon is useful, there- 
fore, as contrasting the object, in all the complete- 
ness of the qualities which really belong to it, with 
the comparatively imperfect knowledge of its quali- 
ties which we have yet attained. The noumenon is 
the object from the point of view of the universe ; 
the phenomenon is the same object from the point of 
view of human knowledge. The noumenon embraces 
in this way the qualities yet to be discovered as well 
as those already known ; while the term phenomenon 
is necessarily limited to what we actually know. But 
if, ex hypothesis a thing were completely to phenom- 
enalize itself to us, — that is, if we had an exhaustive 
knowledge of the qualities of any single thing, — 
then the knowledge of the phenomenon would be, in 
that case, in the strictest sense the knowledge of the 
noumenon. The noumenon is nothing but the mani- 
fold and different qualities reflected into unity." 

But at this point we again encounter a serious dif- 
ficulty. Our knowledge '^fragmentary. The object 

1 Pa-e 173. 



THE THING-IN-ITSELF. 125 

of our search, be it remembered, is not simply to 
find certain constituents or members of reality, but 
more especially to discover if these, when found, can 
be so organized as to afford a basis for our higher 
beliefs. But the conclusion we have reached seems 
to pluck the very heart out of those beliefs. The 
vital centre of religion is the conception of a noume- 
non, a thing-in-itself, a being that sustains vital and 
special relations to all phenomena. When, there- 
fore, we reduce the world to a mere aggregate of 
qualities or relations, and say the noumenon is this 
aggregate and nothing more, do we not, in our reac- 
tion from agnosticism, commit ourselves to a very 
positive form of atheism ? — namely, to the denial 
that there is any such thing as a soul either in man 
or in the great complex that we call the universe ? 
To say that the soul is a mere aggregate of relations 
reflected into unity is the same as to say that the 
distinctive characteristic of soul, its efficiency, is an 
illusion. The conception real being has lost all its 
meaning unless it continues to represent the consti- 
tutive and sustaining centre of a group of manifold 
relations that would in its absence be disunited. 

While apparently traveling away from skepticism, 
our path has unexpectedly opened upon an aggra- 
vated form of it. We must, therefore, retrace our 
steps to the point occupied when we began to answer 
the question as to the existence of a distinctive 
thing-in-itself. 

At that point we intimated that there were more 
ways than one of looking at this question ; and then 
we selected one which was characterized as that of 



126 WHAT IS REALITY? 

an outside spectator. The onty conclusion reached, 
then, is that, so long as we confine ourselves to this 
view, regarding the world as an aggregate of things 
foreign to us, and related only to each other, so long 
we must adhere to the position that the noumenon is 
unknowable, and that we can discover no evidence of 
its existence. We may return to Sir William Ham- 
ilton and agree with him that even if the number of 
our faculties were coextensive with the modes of be- 
ing, so that all of those modes should be exhaustively 
known to us, still would our whole knowledge be, as 
it is at present, only of the relative. Of existence 
absolutely and in itself we should then be as igno- 
rant as we are now. In other words, the mere ex- 
tension of our knowledge could never advance us 
one step toward an inward understanding of things. 
Always we should be grasping the qualities, the 
characteristics of things, never that which makes 
the multiplicity of qualities a unity. 

Now, then, for another point of view. Surely the 
conviction that there is a real centre or essence of 
being, of which all the qualities or aspects of being 
are the emanations, must have some origin. It is 
hard to believe that a conception of which we are so 
tenacious has never been represented in actual ex- 
perience, — that we have not, somewhere or at some 
time, known a thing-in-itself . If, when looking at 
the world from the outside, we said, " The noume- 
non is nothing but the manifold and different quali- 
ties reflected into unity," we must now ask, what is 
it that reflects, and whence comes the unity ? 

Does it not come from that very element of reality 



THE THING-IN-ITSELF. 127 

that the outside view excludes ? Is not the self-con- 
scious soul of man a thing 4n~it self known directly 
as a peculiar and vital element of all experiences ? 
If we make this hypothesis, we must throw aside 
our transformed conception of the noumenon, and 
return to the more familiar one. We must aban- 
don the thought that the thing-in-itself is to be 
known only from the point of view of the universe. 
We must maintain that it is not necessary to grasp 
all the relations of a thing in order to know its 
essential being ; but, on the contrary, that the in- 
most reality of one thing, at least, is made known to 
us in every self-conscious act. 

This is not the same as to say that the real being 
of anything is exhaustively known by us. It is not 
to deny that an absolute knowledge of the noume- 
non, the central being of the universe, is unattain- 
able except from the standpoint of universal know- 
ledge. Neither is it the same as to say that the 
reality of being may be known in the absence of 
all relations. Knowledge arises only through rela- 
tions, but it is not confined to relations. The no- 
tion that it is so confined arises only in our abstract 
reasoning. It does not correspond to experience. 
When, by an outside stimulus, I am made aware of 
a relation existing between myself and something 
else, I am at the same time made aware of myself, 
— of myself as related, it may be, but anyhow, of 
myself. And this knowledge of myself is something 
over and above my knowledge of the relation. 

,If urged to explain what this something is, I 
would say, it is a consciousness of being, pure and 



128 WHAT IS REALITY? 

simple. This consciousness, distinct from all rela- 
tions, abides through all experiences. And it is be- 
cause it so abides, because it is a party to every 
relation of experience, and the centre of all rela- 
tions, that the idea of unity in multiplicity first 
springs up, and then becomes the constructive prin- 
ciple in our judgment of all things. 

But it may be urged, this distinctive unity of the 
ego is only an appearance. It is the result of intro- 
spection. The ego looking upon itself, as if from 
the position of outside spectator, seems to itself to 
be a unity ; but this seeming, constituting as it does 
a particular, exceptional, unclassifiable experience, 
ought not to be regarded as a reality. 

This objection is only a particular application of 
a view of things already considered at some length ; 
and it might seem a sufficient answer to refer to our 
general proposition that any affirmation of expe- 
rience that we are constantly obliged not only to 
think, but to live, must be regarded as true. But 
as the point under discussion is the very keystone of 
our philosophy, f would further point out that the 
situation indicated by this objection does not corre- 
spond to the facts. It is not true that the idea of 
the unity of self has its origin in a certain aspect or 
appearance which subjective phenomena assume to 
us as spectators. The idea in question is not the 
result of reflection, it is a direct consciousness of 
self. At the same time I maintain that, though it 
does not arise in reflection, it is indorsed by it, — 
that the logic of subjective experiences, from an ana- 
lytical point of view, compels the very same belief 






THE THIN G-IX-IT SELF. 129 

that comes, without reasoning, from the deliverances 
of consciousness. 

The great argument of Kant's " Critique," known 
as the transcendental deduction of the unity of ap- 
perception^ seems to me to be unanswerable. Xot- 
withstanding its formidable name, it admits of a 
fairly simple statement. It takes its departure from 
experience. Experience is itself a complex unity. 
It is made up of parts, but these parts are, some- 
how, bound together as a whole. This, Kant argues, 
would be impossible, a contradiction of reason, in 
the absence of a permanent unifying subject. With- 
out such a subject, experience could be nothing other 
than a succession of absolutely isolated phenomena, 
without continuity and without intelligibility. Lotze 
expresses very much the same thought when he 
says, " Our belief in the soul's unity rests not on 
our appearing to ourselves such a unity, but on our 
being able to appear to ourselves at all. ... If a 
being can appear anyhow to itself, or other things to 
it, it must be capable of unifying manifold phe- 
nomena in an absolute indivisibility of its nature." * 

Again, the consideration that the unifying sub- 
ject thus presented to consciousness and reason is 
unique and unclassifiable does not count against its 
reality ; for it is just such a reality that we are 
looking for, just such a reality that we need to ex- 
plain a world that is otherwise inexplicable. 

But it may be asked, of what value is the know- 
ledge of a noumenon that is nothing more than the 
consciousness of being, — the unity that persists 

1 Microcosmus, vol. i. p. 157. 



130 WHAT IS REALITY? 

through all diversity ? Small, indeed, if it were this 
and nothing more. But the mystery of being is not 
the only one elucidated by a reference to self-con- 
sciousness. Having found the reality of being, we 
are able to solve some other riddles of philosophy. 
The concepts intelligence and cause have, equally 
with that of the unity of consciousness, baffled all 
attempts at explanation, as resultants from a plu- 
rality of elements. The analysis of any number of 
intelligent acts throws no light on the origin of in- 
telligence itself. It is an ultimate, undecomposable 
attribute of being, known directly, and only, to 
self-consciousness. The knowledge of it, like that 
of being, comes, it is true, only through relations, 
through intelligent acts ; but it is something other 
than the sum of all these relations. It is an essen- 
tial faculty or activity of being that is a party to 
all intelligent acts ; and it sustains a vital relation 
to each one of these acts, different to the relations 
which they sustain to each other. 

It is the same with the idea of cause. No effort 
of philosophy has proved more abortive than that 
which attempts to deduce the concept cause from 
the relations which things sustain to each other. 
In other words, physical causation, from the purely 
mechanical point of view, is not causation at all. 
It is instrumentality. We can deduce nothing 
from our study of the external world other than 
a chain of sequences; and with these the idea of 
cause has nothing whatever to do, save as it is in- 
troduced from some other source. The essential 
meaning of the word cause is origination. And, no 



THE TRING-IN-ITSELF. 131 

matter how widely our science of external phenom- 
ena extends itself, the origin of things is that which 
it can never touch. The universe presents itself to 
it only as an eternal round of sequences without 
beginning and without end ; and the idea of origin 
could never have been suggested by its contempla- 
tion were not the contemplator a self-conscious be- 
ing, capable of supplying from his own inner expe- 
rience a phase of reality otherwise unknowable. In 
other words, we have the idea of origination, and 
we seek to discover the origin of things, because we 
directly know ourselves as originators. 

To sum up our knowledge, then, we will say that 
our thing-in-itself is known to us as the unity of 
being, as intelligence, and as cause. 

Have we, then, after all, swung round to idealism ? 
By no means. Our self-conscious ego is not the un- 
clothed, isolated abstraction of the subjective phi- 
losophy. It is not the compound subject-object ego 
of Fichte. It is the complex, embodied ego of ex- 
perience, — the ego plus all the relations which it 
sustains to other objects. It is the ego as related 
to its body of organized animal tissues, the ego as 
related to the whole external realm of its own crea- 
tion ; and, furthermore, it is the ego as related to 
other real beings, known to it through analogy and 
experience. By the assistance of all these three 
classes of relations we hope to be able to climb from 
the knowledge of one finite reality, man, to a true, 
though limited, knowledge of the Being that is the 
soul of the great sum of things. 

The method we shall employ is nothing new. It 



132 WHAT IS REALITY? 

is the method by the use of which all the conquests 
of science have been achieved. It is, in short, the 
method of analogy. The word is a familiar one ; 
but the value of the process called analogical is not 
very well defined. I shall, therefore, devote the 
next chapter to an examination of the worth of the 
results reached when we essay to climb from inner 
reality, discovered at one point in the universe, to a 
conception of the inner reality of the whole, 



CHAPTEE VI. 

FROM THE MICROCOSM TO THE UNIVERSE. 

For illustration's sake, let us suppose a mariner 
of ancient times to have been carried, by stress of 
weather, to a remote land, which had once been 
the home of a cultivated but now extinct people ; 
and further, let us suppose him to have discovered 
there various unfamiliar objects. One of these is a 
globe. To his mind, dreaming still of the earth as 
a vast extended plain, this seems nothing more than 
a toy. But his curiosity is aroused by the oddity 
of its ornamentation ; and all at once it occurs to 
him that parts of it have a resemblance to the men- 
tal picture of land and sea that he, as a navigator, 
has formed for himself. 

Further examination discloses additional coinci- 
dences. But after a time the resemblances are ex- 
hausted, and there remains much that exceeds and 
much also that contradicts his experience. In view 
of this, three suppositions occur to him. It may be 
that the resemblances are purely accidental, and 
that his own fancy has helped them out, mailing 
them appear to be more important than they actu- 
ally are. Or, secondly, it may be that the decora- 
tor knew something of the surface of the earth, and 
that, having amused himself with this knowledge as 



134 WHAT IS REALITY t 

far as it went, he extended his sketch in a purely 
imaginative way. Or, thirdly, perhaps the maker 
of the globe knew, not simply as much, but much 
more than its present possessor ; and perhaps, there- 
fore, this seeming toy may be treated as a reliable 
model of the earth. 

As this last hypothesis is the only one that can 
lead to anything, we will suppose, not simply that 
our navigator commits himself to it, but that he de- 
votes his life to the verification of it. His limited 
means admit of his doing this only in a very imper- 
fect and partial way. He cannot circumnavigate 
the globe ; but he treasures every bit of knowledge 
he can get : he collects the accounts given by other 
navigators and compares them with his own experi- 
ence ; he brings together all the vague guesses of 
astronomers and philosophers about the shape of the 
earth ; and thus, by putting this and that together, 
he arrives at a settled conviction that his hypothesis 
is correct, though there are many things about it 
that he can neither verify nor understand. He is 
obliged, we will say, to end his days without being 
able to form any satisfactory conjecture as to how 
it is possible that the earth should exist as a sphere. 
But for all that, his unwavering faith in his model 
has guided him truly, and enabled him to reach sat- 
isfactory and valuable results in many directions. 

Now, when a philosopher makes the hypothesis 
that the little world of which man is the centre is a 
true and reliable guide to a conception of the rela- 
tions sustained by the universe to its centre, he acts 
upon the same principle as our supposed navigator. 



FROM THE MICROCOSM TO THE UNIVERSE. 135 

Let us imagine a philosopher who has become as 
deeply imbued with the realistic prejudices of the 
present age as the old-time navigator was with the 
geographical prejudices of his. He has, we will 
say, given himself wholly to the study of science. 
He has followed with enthusiasm its progressive 
conquests. He has been completely won over to its 
method, as he has traced the steps by which one prin- 
ciple after another has been first guessed at, then 
proximately verified, then simplified, then adopted 
into a larger generalization. He sees, moreover, 
that by faithful adherence to its methods, science 
has obtained such a grasp on the working princi- 
ples of the world that it has accurately prophesied 
events while they were still far away in the future. 
In view of all these achievements he is filled not only 
with a profound respect for these methods, but also 
with a feeling of restful confidence in the results to 
which they lead. Here, he assures himself, is some- 
thing certain, something proved, something real. In 
this I have a foundation on which to build a philos- 
ophy. 

There is nothing to interrupt this impression of 
finality, this feeling of perfect satisfaction, so long 
as his attention is confined solely to the agreements 
of science. But there comes a reaction. For, as a 
philosopher, he must find a meaning in the world ; 
and somehow, the meaning has wonderfully faded 
out of that which formerly was replete with signi- 
ficance. Intelligence, purpose, morality, have be- 
come shadows and illusions. He can find no foun- 
dation in his philosophy for poetry or for religion. 



136 WHAT IS REALITY? 

He lives in a world of atoms and forces. Units of 
mass and units of motion, in an endless round of 
action and reaction, chase each other through his 
imagination. If he concentrates his attention upon 
the atom for the determination of the secret of be- 
ing, he seems to himself like one shut up in an abso- 
lutely dark cell. Or, if he tries to contemplate the 
world as the outcome of an aggregate of homogene- 
ous units in motion, he is revealed to himself as the 
intelligent centre of an unintelligent universe. He 
has a boundless prospect, but it is that of an illimit- 
able desert. As a philosopher, again, he demands 
efficiency. There is nothing in all this unintelligent, 
undifferentiated immensity for a world of variety 
and order to rise from. All the efforts of philoso- 
phers to deduce the forms and qualities of concrete 
things from homogeneous atoms and forces are seen 
to have been as ineffectual as the dreams of perpet- 
ual motion. 

He reflects, further, that the great object of phi- 
losophy is to discover a concept that shall be all- 
comprehensive, to grasp a central principle which 
shall enable us to think of the universe as a great 
organic whole. But in his world of atoms and 
forces he finds no such principle. Whence, he asks 
himself, comes this conviction that the world is a 
unity, that it has a central, controlling principle? 
and whence the craving of philosophy to apprehend 
the totality of things after such a fashion ? Must 
it not be possible to trace this conviction and this 
craving to some experience, some actually known 
whole, dependent upon an efficient central princi- 






FROM THE MICROCOSM TO THE UNIVERSE. 137 

pie, like that demanded for the universe ? Such a 
principle, if it exists in experience, ought to be 
found at the other extreme of the scale of being 
from that in which science has landed him. Yet he 
cannot find it in the camp of idealism ; for this phi- 
losophy is as clearly the product of abstraction as the 
one he has had to abandon. He is looking for the 
antithesis of all abstractions. Nothing less than 
the fullest, most highly-organized form of existence 
can serve his philosophic need. 

In this strait, an old-time word occurs to him, — 
the microcosm. Not the ego, in the seclusion of 
self-consciousness, — but man the soul and body, 
man the centre of a little world of which he is the 
life, the light, and the creator. May not this afford 
the clew that he is seeking ? In this little world he 
finds the most complete contrast to the world of 
atoms and forces. There he could discover no cen- 
tre of causation, but an endless chain of sequences 
proceeding from nowhere, and tending no whither. 
Each link of the chain of nature, even in its most 
complex manifestations, appeared as the equal of 
every other link in importance and significance. 
There was an infinitely varied play of forces, end- 
less transformations of groups, and nothing more. 
But the moment these forces of nature enter the 
kingdom of man all is changed. The valueless be- 
comes valuable. The aimless is made to serve a 
definite end. Instead of following each other in a 
meaningless round, they are disciplined and guided ; 
they become the vehicles of man's thought and the 
instruments of his will. 



138 WHAT IS REALITY? 

He passes in review the constructive work of man 
in its various departments, — each one of them a 
marvel of achievement. Personating the race, he 
sees himself surrounded by a most extensive and 
wonderful world of adaptations, every ray of which 
converges to him as its originating source and sus- 
taining centre. Withdrawing into his own person- 
ality, he knows himself as the creator and centre of a 
less extended but no less real world. This, certainly, 
is no dream of the imagination. This is reality, if 
anything is real ; for in this world he lives and 
plans and executes designs. Is it not, in fact, the 
very reality that he is seeking ? Does not this pic- 
ture of the little world of man, more or less clearly 
denned in the consciousness of every individual of 
the race, declare itself as the unmistakable origin 
of the conviction that the aggregate of things is a 
unity, and that it is governed by one central princi- 
ple ? And if this is the origin of the conviction, 
is it not here also that he should seek for its justi- 
fication ? Is it not reasonable to believe that the 
world of which the individual is the centre is a 
diminutive model of the great universe ? — that the 
knowledge that comes through self -consciousness 
offers to man his one and only opportunity of pene- 
trating below the surface to the inmost reality of 
things ? And may he not, therefore, venture to use 
the microcosm as a guide to a knowledge of the 
world, as a student of geography uses a globe to 
obtain a conception of the earth ? 

There are many difficulties about such an hypoth- 
esis, and through these he must patiently and can- 



FROM THE MICROCOSM TO THE UNIVERSE. 139 

didly think his way. But first of all he asks him- 
self as to the rationality of his proceeding as a 
whole. Suppose he does find many resemblances 
between the microcosm and the universe, is this in 
itself a reason for believing that the inner principle 
of the one is also the inner principle of the other ? 
The hypothesis that he has made is not a new one. 
It is the well-worn one of poetry and religion. He 
has, it is true, reached it in a different way. He 
has not instinctively taken it for granted. He has 
not claimed for it the authority of an inspired reve- 
lation. He has rather been driven into it by a pro- 
cess of exclusion from all other hypothetical inter- 
pretations of the world. But however he has come 
by it, he is obliged to recognize it as a view of 
things that has had much contempt poured upon it. 
Under the name of anthropomorphism, it has been 
pronounced to be the antithesis of scientific method. 
Is it possible to rescue his hypothesis from such im- 
putations by finding for it a truly scientific basis ? 

It certainly ought to be ; for if it is ever scientific 
to hold that a knowledge of one particular group of 
organized phenomena furnishes a clew to the nature 
of another group of phenomena existing on a higher 
scale, it ought to be possible to refer such a belief 
to some general principle. We ought to be able to 
say that experience has demonstrated the fact that 
the universe is, to some extent at least, a series of 
repetitions, so that an intimate knowledge of any 
one organized part of it is, within certain limits, a 
true guide to the interpretation of other parts of 
it, and progressively to every part of it. This cer- 



140 WHAT IS REALITY? 

tainly is assumed by science ; and every step in its 
advance is a witness to the truth of the assumption. 

Up to a certain point the work of science consists 
in observation, in prying research for the collection 
of a great number of facts ; then comes the work of 
comparison and classification ; then the work of con- 
jecture, in which the imagination has free play; 
then the process of exclusion, in the course of which 
many of the suggestions of fancy are set aside as un- 
worthy of attention ; then the process of verification 
for the proof of the surviving conjecture. We are 
at present interested in that stage of the progress 
that relates to the formation of hypotheses. 

The scientific imagination, though free within cer- 
tain limits, is not without guidance, and its chief 
guide is analogy. Having ascertained a principle 
of limited range, it expands this, by means of the 
imagination, till the same principle is capable of 
including a very much wider class of phenomena. 
Every time it repeats this process it acts on the 
assumption that the world is a series of modified 
repetitions ; and every time an hypothesis so made 
is verified the correctness of this assumption re- 
ceives an additional proof. The results of science 
thus present us with what has been appropriately 
called a " hierarchy of principles." Each partial 
generalization foreshadows a higher one in which it 
is sooner or later seen to be comprehended. And 
what is true of principles is equally true of groups 
of phenomena. The whole science of classification 
depends upon the fact of repetition with modifica- 
tion, no different scales. 



FROM THE MICROCOSM TO THE UNIVERSE. 141 

Very recent discoveries have disclosed the exist- 
ence of such orderly arrangements on different 
planes where we should least have suspected it. 
Chemistry, as we know, has been arrested in its all- 
dissolving progress by certain elements that defy 
all attempts at analysis, — elements that have, 
therefore, to be treated as final, absolutely dissimi- 
lar substances. Here, if anywhere, we should an- 
ticipate that the above-mentioned rule would fail us. 
But the very remarkable discovery has recently 
been made, almost simultaneously by a Eussian and 
a German chemist, that these elements are capable 
of being classified in successive series. 

The following very brief and clear statement of 
this is given by Professor Huxley : " If the sixty- 
five or sixty-eight recognized elements are arranged 
in the order of their atomic weights, the series does 
not exhibit one continuous progressive modification 
in the physical and chemical characters of its sev- 
eral terms, but breaks up into a number of sections, 
in each of which the several terms present analogies 
with the corresponding terms of the other series. 
Thus the whole series does not run 

a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, etc. ; 
but 

a, b, c, d, A, B, C, D, a, j3, y, S, etc., 

so that it is said to express a 'periodic law of recur- 
rent similarities. Or the relation may be expressed 
in another way. In each section of the series the 
atomic weight is greater than in the preceding sec- 
tion ; so that if w is the atomic weight of any ele- 



142 WHAT IS REALITY? 

ment in the first segment, w -f- x will represent the 
atomic weight of any element in the next, and w -f- x 
-f- y the atomic weight of any element in the next, 
and so on. Therefore the sections may be repre- 
sented as parallel series, the corresponding terms of 
which have analogous properties ; each successive 
series starting with a body the atomic weight of 
which is greater than that of any in the preceding 
series, in the following fashion : — 

d D S 

c C y 

b B fi 



w W -f X w-f x-f-y 

This is a conception with which biologists are very 
familiar, animal and plant groups constantly ap- 
pearing as series of parallel modifications of similar 
and yet different primary forms." 1 

The discovery of this order led the Russian chem- 
ist, Mendelejeff, to indicate the existence of other 
elements not hitherto recognized. When he first 
ranged the known elements in a tabular form he 
found that a perfectly symmetrical arrangement left, 
here and there, vacant spaces. He called attention 
to these gaps, and ventured not only to prophesy 
that elements then unknown would be found to fill 
them, but even went so far as to describe in detail 
what these undiscovered elements would probably 
be like. Only a few years elapsed before all the 

1 The Advance of Science in the Last Half Century, p. 56. 



FROM THE MICROCOSM TO THE UNIVERSE. 143 

elements thus described were discovered, — the last 
one about three years ago. 

This is only one of the most recent of the mar- 
velous achievements of science, reached by faith in 
the principle that the universe is a system of orderly 
repetitions with variations. Other illustrations of 
the principle, having a closer relation to our prob- 
lem, will easily occur to the reader. If we wish to 
find an analogy for the assumption involved in our 
hypothesis, that the exceedingly limited may reveal 
the nature of that which is inexpressibly extended, 
we have only to call to mind the great law of New- 
ton, — that every particle of matter in the universe 
is related to every other particle, as each of the 
planets is related to the other heavenly bodies. 
Following out this law in connection with the atomic 
theory, we attain to that astounding conception 
for which science has no rebuke, that a molecule 
may be a solar system in miniature. Alluding to 
such a conception, Professor J. P. Cooke says : " A 
theory which assumes that within the masses of 
material bodies the motions of suns and systems are 
reproduced on a scale so minute as to task our power 
of imagination to grasp the conception, is found to 
be in complete accordance with all the facts which 
can be observed." l 

But there is another aspect of our hypothesis that 
needs illustration. The extreme simplicity of the 
relations above instanced may seem to separate 
them, by a wide difference, from the relations postu- 
lated for the interpretation of the inner reality of 
1 The Credentials of Science the Warrant of Faith, p. 265. 



144 WHAT IS REALITY? 

things. The relations sustained by the human mind 
to its environment are so complex, so heterogeneous, 
so hard to be harmonized among themselves, that 
the thought of using them as a guide to a more ex- 
tended field of knowledge may well appear extrava- 
gant. But even here we are not without a prece- 
dent in the methods of science. 

The marvel of marvels in nature for complexity 
and condensation is the egg. The globe of our sup- 
posed navigator, though the most elaborate one ever 
made, is to this epitome of nature's processes as a 
flint implement to the most delicately constructed 
mechanism. For in it, by the aid of the micro- 
scope, we may trace the whole process of the crea- 
tion of a higher animal. First, we have the germ, 
a nucleated cell. This becomes two by a division 
of itself and by growth. By a repetition of this 
process it becomes a multitude. The egg then comes 
to us as an aggregate of homogeneous cells, capable 
of being still further multiplied and, at the same 
time, modified into a great variety of classes, having 
different forms and functions. By these as by a 
trained army of artisans, each just knowing where 
to go and what to do, the living organism, that in 
its unity we call a being, is built up. 

Now, in this wonderful process, modern science 
believes that it has discovered the true key to the 
history of the development of the whole world of 
animate and inanimate forms. At the beginning of 
his book on evolution, Dr. Joseph Le Conte says : 
"Every one is familiar with the main facts con- 
nected with the development of an egg. . . . Now 



FROM THE MICROCOSM TO THE UNIVERSE. 145 

this process is evolution. It is more, — it is the 
type of all evolution. It is that from which we 
get our idea of evolution, and without which there 
would be no such word." As to the importance of 
the principle thus made known to us, the same 
writer says : " The process pervades the whole uni- 
verse, and the doctrine concerns alike every depart- 
ment of science, — yea, every department of human 
thought. It is literally one half of all science." 
And as to its certainty, he says : " The law of evo- 
lution is as certain as the law of gravitation. Nay, 
it is far more certain." 

Now let us see to what extent this important prin- 
ciple, suggested by the egg^ rests upon analogy. It 
has been reached, we may affirm, by the comparison 
of three separate series of forms found in nature. 
First we have the taxonomic series. This is the 
result of classifying the contemporary forms of ani- 
mal life on a scale of relative complexity. Begin- 
ning with a unicellular organism, we advance step 
by step till we reach the higher animals, made 
up of innumerable cells having a great variety of 
forms, functions, and relations. The members of 
this series are not a succession of stages proceed- 
ing directly one from the other, but a series of com- 
pleted independent existences living alongside of 
each other. 

The second series is the phylogenetic or geologi- 
cal series. This seems to be the history in time of 
the former. It shows that the simplest organisms 
came into being first, then those somewhat less sim- 
ple, and then successively those which were more 



146 WHAT IS REALITY 1 

and more complex. The members of this series do 
not appear to be genetically related to each other, 
any more than those of the first series, but the ar- 
rangement of their succession in time gives us the 
idea of a progressive creation. But now we come 
to the third, the ontogenetic or egg series. For the 
purpose of comparison, the process that takes place 
in the egg is marked off into a succession of stages ; 
and the relations which these stages sustain to each 
other seem to reveal in a wonderful manner the se- 
cret of the other two series. Like the taxonomic 
series, it begins with a single cell, and then, by the 
gradual multiplication and differentiation of cells, it 
reaches that unified complex of organs, a higher ani- 
mal. In this series all the members are genetically 
related, that is, they are stages of being that pro- 
ceed directly the one from the other. 

This seems to explain the geological or historical 
series, because its members are similarly related to 
each other, both in the order of time and in the or- 
der of complexity. And it seems to explain the 
classification series, and to unite this with the histor- 
ical, by showing how a series that has been progres- 
sive in time may in its results present the aspect 
of an aggregate of unprogressive fixed forms. For 
the egg series, although progressive, gives rise all 
along its course to forms that remain as immovably 
fixed as the different species of animals that we see 
around us. Different classes of cells, as we have 
seen, are evolved ; and although some of these give 
rise to new classes, some of them remain to repre- 
sent the particular phase of the organism that they 



FROM THE MICROCOSM TO THE UNIVERSE. 147 

introduced. The same is true of organized groups 
of cells. There is a continual branching and re- 
branching. But in the completed organism the va- 
rious stages of differentiation continue to be more 
or less perfectly represented by classifiable cells and 
groups of cells. 

More remarkable still do these coincidences ap- 
pear when it is further observed that the earlier 
stages of the egg series of a higher animal bear a 
striking resemblance to the more mature stages of 
lower animals. This is perhaps most clearly illus- 
trated by a comparison of the successive embryonic 
stages of the human brain with the mature brain of 
animals lower in the scale. The first observable 
form of the human brain is less elaborate than that 
of the ordinary fish. In the next stage it resembles 
that of a fish ; then, by the relative increase of the 
cerebrum, it reaches the reptilian stage ; by con- 
tinued growth, it partly covers the optic lobes and 
resembles the brain of a bird ; then it wholly covers 
the optic lobes, and, partially overspreading the 
cerebellum and the olfactory lobes, may be called a 
mammalian brain ; and finally, it covers and over- 
hangs all and becomes a human brain. In view of 
these facts Dr. Le Conte sums up the argument for 
evolution as follows : — 

" Now why should this peculiar order be observed 
in the building of the individual brain ? We find 
the answer, the only conceivable scientific answer to 
this question, in the fact that this is the order of 
the building of the vertebrate brain by evolution 
throughout geological history. We have already 



148 WHAT IS REALITY? 

seen that fishes were the only vertebrates living in 
Devonian times. The first form of brain, therefore, 
was that characteristic of that class. Then reptiles 
were introduced ; then birds and marsupials ; then 
true mammals; and lastly, man. The different 
styles of brains characteristic of these classes were, 
therefore, successively made by evolution from ear- 
lier and simpler forms. In phylogeny this order 
was observed because these successive forms were 
necessary for perfect adaptation to the environment 
at each step. In taxonomy we find the same order, 
because, as already explained, every stage in ad- 
vance in phylogeny is still represented in existing 
forms. In ontogeny we have still the same order, 
because ancestral characteristics are inherited, and 
family history recapitulated in the individual his- 
tory." 1 

When presented in this form, the reasoning that 
connects the egg series with the other two does not 
at first sight seem to rest altogether upon analogy. 
But a close inspection of the argument will, I think, 
convince us that it has very little else to support it. 
The order of the thought seems to be this : First, 
we compare the three series and find a close resem- 
blance in the succession of their stages. Second, 
knowing that the stages in the egg series are geneti- 
cally related to each other, we infer that those of the 
geological series are similarly related. Third, by a 
reflex argument, we infer that the reason why the 
members of the egg series are genetically related is 
found in the fact that those of the geological series 

1 Evolution and its Relation to Religious Thought, p. 150. 



FROM THE MICROCOSM TO THE UNIVERSE. 149 

were previously so related. Now, aside from anal- 
ogy, what support do we get for the first infer- 
ence? 

If investigation showed that similar conditions 
affected the two series, we could at once establish 
our inference on the principle that like causes pro- 
duce like effects. But this is not the case. The 
conditions in the one case have no resemblance to 
the conditions in the other ; at least, they have no 
resemblance to the conditions that are adduced as 
the chief cause of the original order. Conflict with 
and adaptation to environment are said to have 
originated the race series. But the environment of 
the individual embryo is in every respect unlike 
that of the unprotected, militant organism. In 
reasoning from the egg series to the geological, 
therefore, we have nothing to go upon but analogy, 
that is, a similarity of order existing under external 
circumstances that are in every way dissimilar. 

Let us examine the second step. Having, on the 
strength of analogy, made the hypothesis that the 
members of the geological series are genetically re- 
lated, how can we, on the basis of this hypothesis, 
scientifically deduce the phenomena of the egg series 
from it ? It is said that the principle of heredity 
supplies us with the means of making such a deduc- 
tion. But let us further ask to what extent does 
the principle of heredity, as thus applied, rest upon 
inference from analogy ? The answer must be, al- 
most entirely. We know nothing about the princi- 
ple of heredity, as related to the remote past, except 
inferentially and analogically. So far as direct 



150 WHAT IS REALITY? 

knowledge of the law of heredity is concerned, it re- 
mains such a mystery, from beginning to end, as to 
make the exclusion of almost any hypothesis with 
regard to its action impossible. But the same ig- 
norance of its laws makes it impossible to deduce 
results with any certainty from it. The analogies 
under discussion have contributed many suggestions 
about the law of heredity. But from the law of 
heredity, independently of these analogies,, we get 
very little assistance. 

The elder Agassiz, who did so much to prepare 
the way for the evolution hypothesis, brought to- 
gether and classified the materials in all three of the 
above-mentioned series, and, moreover, made it the 
great work of his life to demonstrate the close rela- 
tionship in which they stood to each other. He 
even went so far as to affirm that the observed repe- 
titions were such as to render the embryonic series a 
true key to classification in the other two. But he 
did not advance to the position that species are de- 
rived from each other by natural descent, because 
there was nothing in the known principles of hered- 
ity to compel such an inference. The connection 
between the three series was, for him, one that had 
its origin and reason in the mind of the Creator. 
There was a uniformity of plan and method, but not 
an interdependence between the series, or a deriva- 
tion of one from the other. 

In short, it seems to me unquestionable that, in so 
far as the modern theory of evolution gains support 
from embryology, it is indebted entirely to analogi- 
cal relations existing on widely different scales, and 



FROM THE MICROCOSM TO THE UNIVERSE. 151 

under circumstances that seem to be wholly unlike 
each other. I am not, be it understood, attempting 
to disparage the argument thus derived. I wish 
only to show how much influence analogy has in de- 
termining our beliefs ; and to what an extent the most 
complex relations may be employed as a key to the 
understanding of other complex relations from which 
they are very widely separated. Nor, on the other 
hand, am I trying to make it appear that the analo- 
gical argument is the only one to which the hypothe- 
sis of evolution refers for support. When once the 
hint of a genealogical relationship between species 
had been furnished by the egg series, scientific re- 
search busied itself to find corroborations of this hint 
in other and widely different relations of things ; and 
although this research failed to discover much that 
it expected to find, anfl found in many cases that 
which seemed, at first sight, the contradiction of the 
hypothesis it was trying to verify, yet so many and 
weighty were the converging evidences in its favor 
that evolution was tentatively established. 

Now let us return to our own hypothesis, that the 
conscious relations which man sustains to his envi- 
ronment furnish us with a key for the interpreta- 
tion of the inner reality of the universe, — a key 
that becomes more and more useful as science dis- 
closes more fully the nature of our environment. 
Let us observe, in the first place, that we actually 
do use these relations, known only to self-conscious- 
ness, for the interpretation of the inner reality of a 
very considerable and very important part of the 
world, and that experience indorses this use. 



152 WHAT IS REALITY. 

Probably no statement with regard to tbe reali- 
ties of the external world would be generally con- 
sidered safer than that which affirms that the in- 
dividual is surrounded by a multitude of living, 
thinking, energizing beings like himself ; and prob- 
ably no kind of knowledge would, at first sight, 
seem to us more direct than that which we have of 
the friends and neighbors with whom we are daily 
brought in contact. But reflection shows us that 
all the knowledge of others that we possess is 
grounded upon analogy, that is, upon a never-end- 
ing succession of analogies. Not that our know- 
ledge of persons is peculiar in this respect. All our 
connected comprehension of the world is attained 
in the same way. Every new object presented to 
sense, and every new idea presented to thought, 
must, to use Mr. G. H. Ltewes's expression, " be 
soluble in old experiences, be recognized as like 
them ; otherwise it will be unperceived, uncompre- 
hended. A conception which is novel, or largely 
novel, is unintelligible even to the acutest intellect ; 
it must be prepared for, ^re-conceived ; and by the 
exhibition of its points of similarity and attachment 
with familiar conceptions, its congruity with these 
may become the ground of its acceptance." 2 Our 
beliefs with regard to the nature of what we call in- 
animate things are gained by comparing inanimate 
things with each other ; those that concern living 
things are reached by comparing living things with 
each other ; and those that have respect to conscious 
beings come by comparing conscious beings with 
each other. 

1 Mind as a Function of the Organism, sec. 77. 



FROM THE MICROCOSM TO THE UNIVERSE. 153 

Except for our own self -consciousness we could 
know nothing whatever of self -con§ciousn ess or in- 
telligence in other beings ; and our progressive 
knowledge of them is attained, first, by a series of 
analogical assumptions or hypotheses, which may 
properly be described as prejudices ; and, second, by 
the verification or correction of these by farther ex- 
perience. That this process is, to a great degree, an 
unconscious one, makes no difference as to its nature. 
When systematically carried out, its method is iden- 
tical with that by which all scientific truths are at- 
tained. Certain general conclusions with regard to 
mankind result from it. First, that all members of 
the human race are like ourselves, and like each 
other ; second, that no two members of the race are 
like each other ; and, third, that the least developed 
can attain only to a very limited and imperfect 
knowledge of the most developed. 

In other words, experience indorses our use of self- 
knowledge as the ground of interpretation for con- 
scious beings widely separated from us, but at the 
same time lays upon us the necessity of wide blank 
spaces in our conception, to be filled up tentatively 
by the imagination. The more closely connected 
two persons are by birth, training, and temperament, 
the fewer the blank spaces, the more complete and 
reliable the conception formed. Yet those who are 
most widely separated find, in virtue of their com- 
mon humanity, grounds for a fairly probable judg- 
ment of character. 

But this is only the beginning of the analogical 
use to which we put our inner knowledge of self. 



154 WHAT IS REALITY t 

All our interpretation of the motives of the lower 
animals proceechs upon the same principle as our in- 
terpretation of men. In our critical moments we may 
be inclined to deny that a shepherd-dog has any 
community of nature with man. But in the synthet- 
ical, practical judgments of his shepherd-master he 
figures as a slightly modified human being. I think 
we may affirm that our success in dealing with the 
more intelligent animals depends upon the faithful- 
ness and discrimination with which we apply this 
self -derived analogy. " Put yourself in his place " 
is, within certain limits, as good a maxim for the 
regulation of our conduct toward a horse as toward 
a man. From the more intelligent animals we de- 
scend, by regular gradations, till we reach those that 
are lowest in the scale of organization. The struc- 
ture of the apparently brainless ant, with its plurality 
of coordinate nerve centres, seems at far too great 
a remove from the human organism to afford the 
slightest ground for a trustworthy analogy. But 
when we study its adaptations and modifications of 
means to ends, we are, in spite of our knowledge of 
structure, convinced that ants not only have intelli- 
gence, but that they have an amazing amount of it. 
And when we drop still lower to contemplate the be- 
havior of the apparently structureless amoeba in 
search of its food, we cannot refrain from applying 
the same analogy for the interpretation of what we 
behold. 

Now, then, if we may successfully reason analogi- 
cally from one form of life to another on a descend- 
ing scale, why not, with equally good results, on an 



FROM THE MICROCOSM TO THE UNIVERSE. 155 

ascending scale ? On the one hand we are under 
the necessity of continually diminishing the concep- 
tion of mind with which we set out, and on the other 
we have to expand this conception. In the one case 
the imagination has to supply limitations, and in the 
other it has to exert itself to remove them. 

An objection which readily suggests itself to the 
ascending application of our analogy may, at first 
sight, seem to be conclusive. Man is the most 
highly organized being of whom we have any direct 
knowledge. He represents the limit of organization. 
The swarm of lower animals, in the midst of their 
diversity, present some resemblance to man. Even 
the microscopic, structureless rhizopod is of the same 
substance (protoplasm) that in man supports con- 
sciousness. When, therefore, we try to understand 
these lower orders by reference to ourselves, we have 
a verifiable community of substance to support us ; 
but when we try to carry the analogy higher, we have 
nothing whatever but fancy to build upon. The fol- 
lowing expression is given to this criticism by Mr. 
G. H. Lewes : " The universe assuredly exists, but 
it does not live ; its existence can only be identified 
with life, such as we observe in organisms, by a com- 
plete obliteration of the specialty which the term life 
is meant to designate. Yet many have not only 
pleased themselves with such a conception, but have 
conceived the universe to be an organism fashioned, 
directed, and sustained by a soul like that of man, — 
the anima mundi. This is to violate all scientific 
canons. The life of a plant organism is not the same 
as the life of an animal organism ; the life of an 



156 WHAT IS REALITY? 

animal organism is not the same as the life of a hu- 
man organism ; nor can the life of a human organism 
be the same as the life of the world organism." : 

It is difficult to answer the charge that the hypo- 
thesis of an anima mundi violates all scientific ca- 
nons ; for where no particular offense is specified, one 
is at a loss how to begin. But we will do our best 
to defend the positive view, and show that the hypo- 
thesis in question is in perfect accord with, scientific 
procedure. Let us remember, in the first place, that 
science has demonstrated to us that the physical 
basis of mind is the same as the physical basis of the 
universe, that the various forms of energy in the 
world are interchangeable. The great m} 7 stery is 
that any form of that which we call matter or force 
can support consciousness or intelligence. Experi- 
ence, however, teaches us that a particular combina- 
tion called protoplasm does support mental activity. 
But is it scientific, or unscientific, to draw from this 
fact the conclusion that without protoplasm there 
can be no consciousness ? 

All we can scientifically affirm is that the one 
series or order of conscious beings with which we are 
acquainted is protoplasmic. But as Dr. Cope very 
truly says : " We are not necessarily bound to the 
hypothesis that protoplasm is the only substance ca- 
pable of supporting consciousness, but to the oppo- 
site view, that the probabilities are in favor of other 
and unspecialized, but unknown, forms of matter, 
possessing this capacity." 2 Nor need we, as Dr. 

1 The Physical Basis of Mind, see. 9. 

2 The Origin of the Fittest, p. 417. 






FROM THE MICROCOSM TO THE UNIVERSE. 157 

Cope does, refer this possibility to other planets. 
We may postulate another series or order of beings 
that repeats the phenomena of consciousness on a 
different scale and therefore under different circum- 
stances. Where we find such a similarity of results 
as appears in comparing the operations of man with 
the operations of nature, it is reasonable and it is 
scientific to assume hypothetically the presence, in 
both cases, of a similar cause, operating under differ- 
ent conditions. 

It is unquestionably true, as Mr. Lewes says, that 
the life of an animal organism is not the same as the 
life of a human organism, and that this last is not 
the same as the life of the world organism ; but it 
does not follow that we violate any scientific canon 
by using the one for the interpretation of the other. 
Science invariably prosecutes its physical quests by 
the use of imperfect analogies. The atomic theory 
is the foundation of chemistry and physics. But 
what is the atom ? It is a purely hypothetical entity, 
conceived of in the first instance by means of a very 
crude analogy. It is imagined as an infinitesimal 
particle of matter, with most of the known qualities 
of matter thought out of it. In fact, there is no 
quality of matter that in some of its relations does 
not have to be denied of the atom ; and yet, by the 
use of this concept, science has accomplished great 
things. The general truth to which this points is 
thus expressed by Stallo : " The steps to scientific 
as well as to other knowledge consist in a series 
of logical fictions which are as legitimate as they 
are indispensable in the operations of thought, 



158 WHAT IS REALITY t 

but whose relations to the phenomena whereof they 
are the partial and not unfrequently merely sym- 
bolical representations must never be lost sight 
of." i 

This may seem to be surrendering all our claim to 
the reality of the results to which our method brings 
us ; but it is not. By the use of such symbols we 
reach a knowledge of relations which is absolutely 
certain. Professor J. P. Cooke thus states the case 
with regard to the atomic theory : " Our atoms may 
be mere fancies, I admit, but like the magnitudes 
we call waves of light, the magnitudes we have 
measured and called atoms must be magnitudes of 
something, however greatly our conceptions in re- 
gard to that something may change. Our whole 
atomic theory may pass, the words molecule and 
atom may be forgotten ; but it will never cease to be 
true that the magnitude which we now call a mole- 
cule of water consists of two of the magnitudes 
which, in the year 1872, were called atoms of hydro- 
gen, and of one of the magnitudes which, at the 
same period, were called atoms of oxygen." 2 

The same writer, in another connection, says of 
the undulatory theory of light: "There cannot be 
a question that the values obtained are real mag- 
nitudes, . . . the deflniteness of the results gives 
us the strongest assurance that our theories con- 
tain an element of truth, although the truth may 
be clothed with much error." But of this same 
theory he affirms that it " demands postulates which 

1 Concepts of Modern Physics, p. 296. 

2 The New Chemistry, p. 239. 



FROM THE MICROCOSM TO THE UNIVERSE. 159 

even the wildest imagination cannot reconcile with 
common sense." 1 

Now let us remember that the great object of our 
inquiry with regard to the Supreme Being — -the 
object which ^removes it from the category of aim- 
less speculation — is the ascertainment of the rela- 
tions which such a Being sustains to the world of 
which we are a part ; and the relations which we 
as rational moral beings sustain to Him. And as 
the value of any scientific hypothesis is measured 
by the degree to which it can be depended upon in 
practice, so the ultimate test of the value of our 
conceptions of God must always be the appeal to 
life. We cannot for a moment think that our 
humanly formed ideas of Him are anything more 
than symbols. They cannot give a complete know- 
ledge of Him, but only certain aspects of his being 
and character, certain relations which He sustains to 
us, — relations of which our experience is, for all 
practical purposes, a sufficient measure. 

But we are not on this account to jump to the 
conclusion that the symbols are to be despised. 
They are, to invert the order of Stallo's expression, 
as indispensable as they are legitimate. We cannot 
move a step without them. Take them away and 
there is no reality left. There cannot be relations 
without things to be related ; and in all such cases, 
where the hypothetical reality leads to the discov- 
ery of verifiable relations, we know for a certainty 
that our conception of this postulated thing or being 
is true in some very important respects. We can- 

1 The Credentials of Science the Warrant of Faith, p. 220, 



160 WHAT IS REALITY f 

not substitute at random any other symbols for 
those that have been thus verified. At any given 
time they constitute the nearest possible approach 
to reality. It is none the less true, however, that 
they are open to modification, that they have reached 
their position through the instrumentality of other 
less perfect symbols, and that there is every reason 
to believe in a continuance of the process to which 
they owe their existence. 

Our thought, like our life, is a moving equilib- 
rium ; and the same practical problem confronts us 
in every department of it, namely, to hold firmly our 
faith in that which has been established by experi- 
ence, while keeping our minds open for the recep- 
tion and assimilation of those new aspects of reality 
that further experience is sure to bring. In poli- 
tics, in social adjustments, in the natural sciences, 
in religion, it is the same. Without stability, we 
cannot prosper in any of these ; but it must be the 
stability of a growing organism, not that of a stone. 

Let this suffice for a general setting forth of the 
legitimacy and value of the analogical method. 
We must now turn to a defense of that particular 
application of it that we have, as it were, drifted 
into. At the close of the last chapter we said that 
the basis of our analogy would be the complex ego 
of experience, — " the ego, plus all the relations 
that it sustains to other objects." And already, by 
way of illustration, we have applied our method in 
the use of one particular class of relations, - — those, 
namely, which the mind of man sustains to the 
physical organism which is at the same time the 






FROM THE MICROCOSM TO THE UNIVERSE. 161 

vehicle and the expression of his personality. It 
will probably have occurred to the reader that the 
use of this particular set of relations, if it can be 
justified, renders unnecessary, or even impossible, 
the use of any other. The relations which the ego 
sustains to the living tissues of the body and to its 
various organs and faculties seem to have very little 
in common with the relations that it sustains to 
other intelligent beings ; and when we come to the 
relations which exist between it and inanimate 
things, the difference appears to be radical and quite 
irreconcilable. 

If, therefore, we attach ourselves to the first for 
a conception of the relations that the Supreme Be- 
ing sustains to the universe, does not this choice 
absolutely exclude the use of the other two sets of 
relations, which we must regard as equally real ? 
And have we, it may be further asked, been guided 
to this choice by anything more than a caprice? 
The view which it opens before us is not one with 
which we have been made familiar by traditional 
thought ; it is, in many respects, the antithesis of 
that thought. The quality of externality that char- 
acterizes the relations that we sustain to inanimate 
things has characterized also the time-honored con- 
ception of the relations that the Supreme Being 
sustains to the world as a creator ; and the relations 
existing between human individuals have formed and 
dominated all our thought of God as a moral gov- 
ernor. . Our religious beliefs have become identified 
with these methods of conception ; and these sym- 
bols are so interwoven with our religious experience 



162 WHAT IS REALITY? 

as to have become their very framework and sup- 
port. How, then, without traversing principles 
laid down in this very chapter, are we to substitute 
other symbols for those that have been so thoroughly 
indorsed, as to their validity, by use ? 

These questions we shall try to answer in succeed- 
ing chapters. 



CHAPTER VII. 

MECHANISM TRANSFORMED. 

When we were trying to establish the propriety 
of extending our knowledge of living organisms to 
the interpretation of the universe, we took the 
ground that the limits of organic being are not 
necessarily coincident with the limits of protoplasm. 
It is legitimate, we argued, and in accordance with 
scientific procedure, to assume that other forms of 
matter may be the vehicle and expression of other 
forms of being, organized on a far more extended 
scale than anything in the protoplasmic order. We 
therefore made the hypothesis that the universe is 
the manifestation of a Being ; and that every part 
of it bears somewhat the same relations to this 
Being that the various members of a human body 
bear to the ego that they serve and represent. 

Now, before we venture on the justification of 
this particular hypothesis, it may be well for us to 
consider, as widely as possible, the bearings of our 
principle. What other equally legitimate applica- 
tion may it have ? And do any of these applications 
involve absurdities ? I think there can be no ques- 
tion that it is equally open to us, when once we have 
broken through the protoplasmic order, to extend 
our analogy on a descending as well as on an ascend- 



164 WHAT IS BEALITY? 

ing scale. If we may believe that a soul, at the 
centre of the universe, is the efficient reality of the 
great sum of things, why may we not believe that a 
soul is also the essential reality of a compound mole- 
cule ? And why, when we reach the simple atom, the 
ultimate unit of science, should we not postulate 
an atomic soul as the inner elementary reality of 
the world of things ? It might, indeed, be alleged 
that the two cases stand on an entirely different 
footing, in that one presents us with an infinite com- 
plexity of adjustments, which everywhere suggests an 
organism ; while the other, the ultimate unit, is as- 
sumed to be absolutely simple. 

But let us ask ourselves, what do we know about 
the simplicity of elementary atoms ? All we can 
say of them is that they are the least complex things 
of the world. They are assumed to be ultimate 
only as indivisible. They are units ; but their 
unity may involve an inner complexity, — a com- 
plexity of nature. And, in fact, the phenomena of 
chemistry oblige us to affirm such a complexity. 
For how can absolutely simple elements, when 
brought together, give rise to a great variety of re- 
sponses or reactions ? Every hypothetical unit of 
chemistry has unmeasured possibilities of operation, 
according to its environment. If, therefore, com- 
plexity of behavior is any indication of complexity 
of constitution, we have the most abundant evidence 
that the simplest elements of the world are only 
relatively simple; that they are, in fact, of many 
different kinds, endowed with radically different 
natures. 



MECHANISM TRANSFORMED, 165 

There is, indeed, a dream of chemistry, in which 
all the differences of things are imagined as arising 
from differences of position and form and grouping, 
brought about by a varied play of forces among the 
atoms of one homogeneous substance. But this is 
really a dream of physics and not of chemistry. 
The phenomena of isometric compounds, it is true, 
show that the very same atoms may give rise to 
molecules of different substances having wholly dif- 
ferent qualities, when they are arranged in different 
relations of position to each other. But unless 
there were an inner response of such atoms, their 
differences of position could not, in any case, give 
rise to chemical phenomena ; that is, to that mys- 
terious union in which different atoms merge all 
their distinctive characteristics in the formation of 
a new substance having no resemblance whatever 
to its constituents. As Professor Cooke has ex- 
pressed it, " If nature were made out of a single 
substance, there would be no chemistry, even if 
there could be intelligences to study science at all. 
Chemistry deals exclusively with the relations of 
different substances." 1 

So far as natural phenomena are concerned, 
therefore, I think we may affirm that it is just as 
legitimate to entertain the hypothesis that the ele- 
mentary realities of the world are atomic souls, as 
it is to assume that there is one all-embracing, Su- 
preme Being at the head or centre of the universe. 
And in what follows I shall endeavor to show that 
both these hypotheses are not simply legitimate, but 

1 The New Chemistry, p. 14. 



166 WHAT IS REALITY? 

that the progress of thought, in science as well as in 
philosophy, has rendered them indispensable. 

Are we, then, about to abandon one side of real- 
ity, and to deny that there is any such thing as 
matter ? On the contrary, having with much pains 
laid the foundation of an all-comprehensive realism, 
we mean to build squarely upon it ; and we une- 
quivocally affirm the reality of that which has been, 
and will undoubtedly continue to be, called matter. 
But we wish, at the same time, to persuade the 
reader that the quality of an atom which we may 
call its materiality is only one aspect of its reality, 
and not the most essential or vital one. It is no 
part of our endeavor to displace the concept mate- 
rial atom. That concept has had, and must con- 
tinue to have, its legitimate and indispensable uses, 
even though we fully recognize its inadequacy. 

Let us look, for a moment, at the origin of the 
word matter. I do not mean its formal etymology, 
but the necessity of thought that called it into ex- 
istence. Things naturally fall, in our experience, 
into two great classes. On the one hand are ranged 
those that seem to be centres of spontaneous activ- 
ity and originating power, and on the other those 
that appear to be absolutely passive. This distinc- 
tion runs all through our thinking. We cannot do 
without it. Always it is the man who works and 
effects the changes, it is the material that is worked 
upon and changed. We cannot abandon this way 
of regarding things, because clearness of thought is 
attained only by making sharp distinctions. The 
inertness of matter is a palpable fact as related to 



MECHANISM TRANSFORMED. 167 

many of our dealings with it ; and this fact we must 
express by some word, even though we know that 
this word does not embody the exact truth. We 
pursue identically the same method when we have 
to express some of the most familiar relations of 
space. For instance, before the days of science, 
men accustomed themselves to call certain portions 
of space empty, to distinguish them from certain 
other portions that were occupied by tangible ob- 
jects. But now it has been demonstrated that what 
we call emptiness is, in reality, only a somewhat 
modified form of what we call fullness. None the 
less, however, do we continue to speak of empty 
spaces. The scientific truth is an all-important one 
in its place, but it is quite out of relation to the 
special distinction that the requirements of living 
make it necessary for us to express when we use the 
word empty. 

So it is with regard to the word matter. Even 
though we should succeed in demonstrating that 
matter is not the absolutely passive, inanimate thing 
that it appears to be, this would have no bearing 
upon the popular or even upon the purely scientific 
use of the word in its old signification. For how- 
ever clearly science may recognize the fact that its 
solid, impenetrable, inelastic atom is only a symbol 
derived from a crude and one-sided conception of 
the true nature of matter, it may nevertheless be 
useful, for a long time to come, to treat it, in some 
connections, as if it were the very thing that it is 
assumed to be. 

The position here taken, let it be observed, is in 



168 WHAT IS REALITY? 

advance of that contended for in the last number of 
this series. There it was said to be legitimate to 
use a single aspect of a thing, in certain connections, 
as the representative of its full reality. Now we 
have to recognize that different aspects of one and 
the same thing, different abstractions from a given 
reality, may be continued in use at the same time 
for the exploration of different fields of thought. 
The attainment of a higher point of view, the dis- 
covery of a concept lying nearer to the heart of 
things, does not necessitate the abandonment of the 
lower point of view, or the cruder concept. I have 
called particular attention to this, because we have 
now to exhibit the relation that the concept mechan- 
ism, retained in popular thought and in the science 
of physics, sustains to the concept atomic soul, made 
use of in the higher ranges of science and in phi- 
losophy. Or, to put it in other words, we have to 
show why it is necessary to think of the universe as 
a living organism, every atom of which has a spirit- 
ual nature, while at the same time we continue to 
treat it, in other relations, as a vast machine. 

The justification of the concept mechanism is to 
be found in the history of its experimental use. It 
has been practically tested, first in ordinary life, 
and then in the combinations of science. By its aid, 
the science of physics has sprung into being. It has 
been to the explorer of nature's instrumentalities 
what vessels have been to navigators. We may say 
that without it we should never have had an organ- 
ized science. And, further, we have to say that now 
it is just as useful, just as indispensable, and just as 



MECHANISM TRANSFORMED. 169 

intolerant of the intrusion of other views as it ever 
was. 

Even though our hypothesis of a universally ani- 
mated nature should be established beyond a doubt, 
the physicist would have no occasion to take account 
of it. While prosecuting his particular quest, he 
not only has no need to avail himself of the analo- 
gies derived from the relations which spiritual be- 
ings sustain to each other, but he is debarred from 
paying any attention to such relations by the re- 
quirements of his work. The inventor of machin- 
ery, whose mind is teeming with mechanical details 
that are constantly changing their forms and their 
relations to each other, would not advance his work 
by turning his attention to that other aspect of the 
same process that is represented by nerve-cell com- 
binations ; and the compositor who should neglect 
his type-setting to criticise the treatise that he has 
to set up for printing would not be a valuable man 
in his place. Just so the student of physics who 
does not adhere closely to the external aspects of 
the phenomena that he is investigating betrays the 
trust for which he is specially responsible. 

The very same is true of that familiar form of 
anthropomorphism that concentrates attention upon 
the external aspects of the relations that the Su- 
preme Being sustains to the universe. In the sym- 
bolism of this view, the world is divided into mind 
and mechanism, and the action of the former upon 
the latter is construed after the analogy of man's re- 
lations to the machines that he invents and super- 
intends. Such a conception has its legitimate place. 



170 WHAT IS REALITY? 

It represents clearly and forcibly one very impor- 
tant aspect of reality. It makes the thought of 
God, as the designer, creator, and protector of the 
world, one that may be easily grasped. And, fur- 
thermore, in so far as the world is rightly conceived 
of as a mechanism, such a symbolism represents the 
truth. All the actual machinery of our experience, 
from which the idea of the world as a mechanism is 
derived, is the product of mind. Every machine 
appears, externally, to be a complex of relations be- 
tween inanimate things; but before it took this 
form, it was a complex of relations between nerve 
cells and fibres, the living instruments of man's in- 
ventive spirit. When, therefore, we look upon an 
elaborate piece of mechanism, we may affirm that it 
is human mind expressing itself in outwardly em- 
bodied forms. 

Metal and wood and belting do not constitute a 
machine, any more than printer's ink and paper 
constitute a treatise. All the relations of materials 
and of parts that really are the machine have had 
their beginning in the mind of some man ; and, 
having once existed there, they are made to express 
themselves in external forms, just as the ideas that 
make a treatise assume, for useful ends, the guise 
of ink and paper. In short, the idea of a machine 
that is not the product or expression of mind is 
a pure abstraction. And the mechanical aspect of 
nature, taken by itself, is unintelligible. It is like 
part of an inscription found on a broken slab : it 
has no meaning till we supplement it with the idea 
of mind ; then the meaningless becomes intelligible. 



MECHANISM TBANSFOEMED. Ill 

We know that we have found the other 'half of the 
slab, because this justifies its relation to the first 
half by making sense out of nonsense. 

But valuable as the symbolism thus derived is, I 
have now to show that the mechanical explanation 
of nature is as inadequate to serve the necessities of 
science, as the thought of a God external to things 
is to meet the requirements of theism ; that the one, 
as the other, demands a symbolism that shall ex- 
press more comprehensive relations. 

We will consider the case of science first ; and 
then we shall be able to see whether the wider con- 
cept that meets its wants can be successfully applied 
to those of philosophy and theology. The insuffi- 
ciency of the mechanical theory to which I shall 
first direct attention grows out of the logical devel- 
opment of that theory itself. It grows out of it 
through the application of that general principle of 
science known as the law of continuity. This law 
is the assumption that the order that has been is 
the order that will be, — that the relations known 
to exist within the range of our experience exist, in 
some more or less modified form, under similar cir- 
cumstances, beyond our experience. It is, in fact, 
another name for the principle of the uniformity of 
nature. All the great generalizations of science are 
based upon it. That pan-mechanical idea of the 
universe that we have already considered is a pro- 
duct of it. So, also, is the doctrine of the conser- 
vation of energy, and that of the transmutation of 
forces. These theories have been gradually estab- 
lished by a long succession of discoveries, each one 



172 WHAT IS REALITY? 

of which has enlarged the field of a principle once 
thought to be limited in its application. Each new 
discovery has lessened the probability that the prin- 
ciple in question has any limit at all. And so the 
mind has been gradually coerced into the belief of 
its universality. 

It was easy, as we have seen, to confuse this idea 
of universality — of all-extensiveness ' — with the 
closely related idea of all-comprehensiveness. But 
the falseness of this inference was soon made ap- 
parent by the fact that mind was thus excluded 
from the world. Mind was excluded, not because 
it appeared to be unnecessary for the explanation of 
the world, but because there was no longer any 
room for it. In the mechanical sequence, the en- 
ergy of each physical change was seen to be taken 
up in producing its physical effects ; there was none 
left over, at any point, to account for mental phe- 
nomena. But mental facts could not be altogether 
ignored. Hence the hypothesis that there are two 
parallel sets of phenomena, intimately associated, 
but not connected as cause and effect. The physi- 
cal facts, it was said, go along absolutely sufficient 
to themselves ; and the mental facts, with a like in- 
dependence, go along by themselves. 

This conception, which strongly suggests the old 
one of a " preestablished harmony," has taken on 
many forms under modern philosophical treatment. 
Professor Bain and Mr. Herbert Spencer are essen- 
tially agreed in their representation of the twin 
series as one, that presents to our apprehension two 
aspects. Mr. Spencer calls feeling and nervous 



MECHANISM TRANSFORMED. 173 

action " the inner and outer faces of the same 
change." But Professor Bain further calls attention 
to the fact that this two-sidedness is limited, in our 
experience, to a special class of physical sequences. 
" If," he says, " all mental facts are at the same 
time physical facts, some one will ask, what is the 
meaning of a proper mental fact? Is there any 
difference at all between mental agents and physical 
agents ? There is a very broad difference, which 
may be easily illustrated. When any one is pleased, 
stimulated, cheered by food, wine, or bracing air, 
we call the influence physical ; it operates on the 
viscera, and through these upon the nerves, by a 
chain of sequence purely physical. When one is 
cheered by good news, by a pleasing spectacle, or by 
a stroke of success, the influence is mental ; sensation, 
thought, and consciousness are part of the chain, 
although these cannot be sustained without their 
physical basis. The proper physical fact is a single, 
one-sided, objective fact ; the mental fact is a two- 
sided fact, one of its sides being a train of feelings, 
thoughts, or other subjective elements. We do not 
fully represent the mental fact unless we take ac- 
count of both the sides." 1 

In both these cases, it will be observed, mental 
phenomena are produced, but in the one case they 
are the result of antecedents that have no mental 
side. But how shall we account for the difference ? 
If there is but one fact, why should it have two 
sides in certain special cases and only one in all the 
rest? The special case points to some special cause, 

1 Mind and Body, p. 133. 



174 WHAT IS REALITY? 

but under the purely mechanical view there is no 
such cause ; for mental phenomena are nothing more 
than the concomitants of physical changes. 

This consideration led Professor Clifford to make 
the very hypothesis that we are advocating. To 
avoid, the assumption that acts of consciousness, 
occurring only here and there in connection with 
physical changes, are creations out of nothing, he 
supposes that consciousness, in some rudimentary 
form, is a necessary characteristic of all matter in 
motion ; and that this, in organisms of great com- 
plexity, gives rise to that which we call mind. He 
says : " The only thing that we can come to, if we 
accept the doctrine of evolution at all, is that even 
in the very lowest organisms, even in the amoeba 
which swims about in our own blood, there is some- 
thing or other, inconceivably simple to us, which is 
of the same nature with our own consciousness, al- 
though not of the same complexity. That is to say 
(for we cannot stop at organic matter, knowing as 
we do that it must have arisen by continuous phys- 
ical processes out of inorganic matter), we are 
obliged to assume, in order to save continuity in 
our belief, that along with every motion of matter, 
whether organic or inorganic, there is some fact 
which corresponds to the mental fact in ourselves." l 

To one who has not considered attentively the 
phenomena of nature as an indefinitely extended 
series of gradations, such a conclusion as this will 
seem a simple absurdity. Does it not involve the 

1 "Body and Mind," p. 731, Contemporary Review, December, 
1874. 



MECHANISM TRANSFORMED. 175 

reversal of all our common-sense judgments about 
things ? Are not rocks and earth and metal the 
antithesis, in every respect, of mind ? Is fire made 
of atomic souls ? Is all the dust and corruption of 
the world to be thought of as alive, or capable of 
life ? A thousand such questions, starting up from 
as many pre-judgments about the nature of things, 
press in a motley throng to hustle such a conception 
out of the companionship of sane ideas. But if the 
reader to whom it is a novelty will have patience, 
I think he will confess that there is a good deal 
more to be said for it than at first sight appears pos- 
sible. 

In the first place, by way of getting such an ob- 
jector into a receptive mood, I will call attention to 
the fact that the law of continuity has been justified 
in a great number of cases, which, at first, seemed 
quite as unpromising as the one before us. In 
treating of this law, Dr. Jevons makes the follow- 
ing general remark : "One common result of the 
progress of science is to show that qualities sup- 
posed to be entirely absent from many substances 
are present, only in so low a degree of intensity that 
the means of detection were insufficient. . . . We 
are rapidly learning that there are no substances 
absolutely opaque, or non-conducting, non-electric, 
non-elastic, non-viscous, non-compressible, insoluble, 
infusible, or non-volatile. All tends to become a 
matter of degree or sometimes of direction." 1 

In illustration of this tendency, the same writer 

1 The Principles of Science, by W. Stanley Jevons, LL. D., chap, 
xxvii. 



176 WHAT IS REALITY? 

adduces, among other examples, the following : New- 
ton believed that most bodies were quite unaffected 
by the magnet ; Faraday and Tyndall, on the con- 
trary, have rendered it very doubtful whether any 
substance whatever is wholly devoid of magnetism. 
So with regard to electricity ; the inconceivable ra- 
pidity with which an electric current passes through 
pure copper wire, when compared with the appar- 
ently complete manner in which it is stopped by a 
thin partition of gutta-percha, seems, at first sight, 
to demonstrate an absolute diversity of nature, as 
regards electricity, in these two substances. And 
for a long time it was believed that electrical con- 
ductors and insulators formed two opposed classes 
of substances. But Faraday demonstrated that 
these were but the extreme cases of a chain of sub- 
stances varying in all degrees in their powers of 
conduction. Even the best conductors, such as pure 
copper or silver, offer some resistance to the electric 
current, while other metals have considerably higher 
powers of retardation. And, on the other hand, the 
best insulators allow of an atomic induction which 
is the necessary antecedent of conduction. Hence 
the inference that, whether we can measure the ef- 
fect or not, all substances discharge electricity more 
or less. Another very remarkable case of unsus- 
pected continuity was revealed when it was success- 
fully shown that the liquid and gaseous conditions 
of matter are only remote stages in a continuous 
course of change. 

Further illustration would not help us to under- 
stand the principle ; and as to the number of such 



MECHANISM TRANSFORMED. 177 

unexpected verifications of the law of continuity, it 
is sufficient to say that they have made it necessary 
to almost reverse the rule laid down by Newton on 
the subject. " Those qualities of bodies," he held, 
" which are not capable of being heightened and 
remitted, and which are found in all bodies on which 
experiment can be made, must be considered as uni- 
versal qualities of all bodies." But, in the light of 
more recent discovery, Dr. Jevons declares the con- 
trary to be more probable ; namely, that " qualities 
variable in degree will be found in every substance 
in a greater or less degree." 

Another consideration that ought to make us tol- 
erant of seemingly wild hypotheses, in the applica- 
tion of this law, is the fact that, in most of the cases 
where a given property has been proved to belong 
to a great number of substances in varying degrees, 
this property has first attracted attention by mani- 
festing itself in a conspicuous and intense manner 
in some particular substance. Owing to this, it has 
often been the case that such a property on its first 
appearance has been regarded as the isolated pecu- 
liarity of this substance. " Every branch of phys- 
ical science," says the author above quoted, " has 
usually been developed from the attention forcibly 
drawn to some singular substance. Just as the load- 
stone disclosed magnetism, and amber frictional elec- 
tricity, so did Iceland spar show the existence of 
double refraction, and sulphate of quinine the phe- 
nomena of fluorescence. When one such startling 
instance has drawn the attention of the scientific 
world, numerous less remarkable cases of the phe- 



178 WHAT IS BEALITTf 

nomenon will be detected, and it will probably 
prove that the property in question is universal to 
all matter." 

Carrying these general considerations with us, 
let us now attack the problem in detail. Mind, it 
is said, has certain characteristics that separate it 
absolutely from matter. Is this true ? It may be 
that mind and matter, though so sharply contrasted 
in our thought, are not mutually exclusive. It may 
turn out, as it has in so many other cases, that each 
shares, only in different degrees, the essential char- 
acteristics of the other. The first quality of matter 
to be questioned shall be the invariability of its re- 
sponses to external influences. The laws of matter, 
we say, can be accurately ascertained, so that, when 
we have discovered how a given combination of sub- 
stances has acted under certain well-defined circum- 
stances, we know exactly how it will always act. 
The circumstances being the same, there will be no 
shadow of variability in its behavior. Mind, on the 
contrary, is characterized by an indeterminate ele- 
ment. It has within it a principle of freedom, or 
self-determination. Its action cannot be certainly 
predicted. 

Starting from the side of matter, we have little 
difficulty in showing that the particular character- 
istic which we have regarded as distinctive of it is 
shared by mind. The operations of mind are to 
a very great extent determined from the outside. 
They are for the most part governed by a routine 
as rigid as that of operations that we call purely 
mechanical. Even when we confine our attention to 



MECHANISM TRANSFORMED. 179 

the most complex manifestation of mind, we have 
to recognize the fact that individual human beings 
differ very widely as to the predominance of self- 
determination in their behavior. And if we follow 
down, step by step, the scale of animated existences, 
we find ourselves led, by almost imperceptible stages, 
to a point where it is difficult to say whether what 
we behold has an indeterminate element or not. 

Should we not state the case more exactly, then, 
if, instead of saying indeterminate action is a dis- 
tinguishing peculiarity of mind, we should say, self- 
determination is a characteristic of the higher 
forms of mind? We are not trying to show that 
an atom is possessed of all the qualities that char- 
acterize the most highly developed human mind, but 
that it may be possessed of certain fundamental 
qualities that belong everywhere to mind as such. 
Self-determination, we hold, is not a necessary con- 
comitant of mind. It may be only a characteristic 
of its more complex forms. New qualities make 
their appearance all along the course of evolution. 

What, then, we may very properly be asked, are 
the fundamental qualities that everywhere distin- 
guish mind as such ? We will venture to say that 
spontaneity of action and consciousness are essen- 
tial attributes of every form of mind. By sponta- 
neity I do not mean movement in the absence of 
an external stimulus, but movement from within in 
response to an external stimulus ; I am thinking, 
in fact, of that class of movements that are made 
known to us in the transformations of chemistry. 
When matter is moved in bulk by an outwardly 



*-- 



180 WHAT IS REALITY f 

applied force which does not affect the inward con- 
stitution of its molecules, there is nothing, it seems 
to me, to suggest mental action ; but when a com- 
pound molecule is broken up, and its constituent 
atoms seek and enter into new combinations in re- 
sponse to a changed environment, there is something 
that closely resembles psychical action. 

It is certainly significant, in this connection, that 
eminent physiologists are unable to agree as to 
where, on the scale of existences, psychical action 
ends and chemical begins. For instance, M. Charles 
Eichet affirms that " the laws of irritability act in 
all their simplicity and rigor among simple beings. 
In fact, in every instance of investigation into the 
nature of simple organisms, or such as appear sim- 
ple by the optical instruments at our disposal (a 
fact that does not always prove their simplicity), 
as bacteria, for example, we find that chemical ir- 
ritability is the apparently sole law of movement. 
What else, indeed, are the movements of these bac- 
teria so thoroughly studied by M. Englemann, if 
not an affinity for oxygen, — in other words, the 
simplest and most universal chemical phenomenon 
in all nature ? " 1 To this M. Alfred Binet replies : 
" We believe that, as yet, no one has demonstrated 
that the movements of a living being, in moving 
towards a distant object, however simple they may 
be, can be explained merely by a chemical affinity 
acting between that being and that object. It is 
certainly not chemical affinity that is acting, but 
much rather a psychological need." 

1 Translated from the Revue Philosophise for the Open Court, 
December 27, 1888. 









MECHANISM TRANSFORMED. 181 

It is clear, I think, that one great point of differ- 
ence between these two eminent physiologists lies in 
their different attitudes to the law of continuity. 
M. Richet holds that simple beings have a simple 
psychology. He does not mean to affirm that this 
simple psychology, because it may be expressed in 
the terms of chemistry, is therefore not psychical. 
On the contrary, he elsewhere calls it " elementary 
psychic life." But M. Binet, seeing in chemical 
affinity something very unlike psychical or physio- 
logical need, assumes that there is no community of 
nature between the two. And in so doing he seems 
to me to be drawing one of those arbitrary lines, 
which have been so frequently laid down only to be 
obliterated by the onward movement of scientific 
investigation. 

The origin of such lines, if I am not mistaken, is 
to be found in the idea that, at some point on the 
scale of existences, all complexity of nature ceases ; 
and that there are such things in the world as abso- 
lutely simple elements, — an idea which we have 
found to be the contradiction of experience. The 
same way of thinking has operated to restrict the 
recognition of consciousness below a certain line ; 
so that we find the greatest diversity in biological 
writers as regards the freedom with which they 
impute this characteristic to the lower orders, and 
often the greatest pains taken to define the limits 
within which it may be believed to exist. It is as- 
sumed that, until we reach a certain degree of com- 
plexity of constitution, there is nothing in the world 
but mechanical action ; and that consciousness su- 
pervenes as an absolutely new product. 



182 WHAT IS REALITY? 

The simple fact is that consciousness cannot be 
proved to exist at any point. Its recognition is 
always a matter of analogical inference. And I 
believe no good reason can be alleged for refusing 
to extend our analogy to existences that display so 
great a variety of operation, in response to irritation, 
as the elementary atoms of chemistry. If conscious- 
ness in man is the concomitant of complex chemical 
changes, is it not reasonable to infer a simpler form 
of consciousness as the attendant of chemical changes 
that are relatively simple ? 

We cannot dwell longer on this point, for we 
have to consider another of the characteristics of 
what we call inanimate matter. The immobility of 
many of the materials that surround us seems to 
render the idea that they have any psychical element 
too improbable. We hold in the hand a coin that 
a thousand years ago was just what it is now, and 
say, is it thinkable that the atoms of which this coin 
is composed are beings with the possibility of any- 
thing like mental responses or consciousness ? Ages 
upon ages before this coin was formed, the mole- 
cules of copper of which it is composed laid immov- 
able in the earth. Certainly it does seem almost too 
heavy a thought for the imagination to lift ; and we 
eagerly search through the psychic life with which 
we are familiar for all possible analogies that may 
illustrate these long intervals of inactivity and un- 
consciousness. 

Even in the most complex beings we have the 
phenomenon of deep, dreamless sleep. We have 
also the phenomena of coma and catalepsy to re- 



MECHANISM TRANSFORMED. 183 

mind us that the most highly developed minds may- 
continue long in a state bordering upon absolute 
inactivity. And when we descend the biological 
scale, we find, in the hibernating animals, much 
more remarkable instances of suspended animation. 
Creatures that are so frozen as to appear to be sim- 
ple fragments of ice will reassume, on the applica- 
tion of heat, all their functions. The simpler the 
combinations into which elementary beings enter, 
the more lasting should we expect these combina- 
tions to be, and the longer, therefore, the possible 
intervals between their active states ; for we know 
that consciousness, and psychic activity of every 
kind, is the concomitant of chemical change. 

But we are apt to deceive ourselves when we pic- 
ture to the imagination the deadness of matter. 
We forget that civilization is engaged in a hand- 
to-hand and never-ending conflict with the eternal 
restlessness of this same dead matter. Unless care- 
fully guarded, very few of the things that we use 
last long, not simply because they wear out or meet 
with violent ends, but more especially because the 
elements of which they are composed are forever 
changing their alliances. We forget, moreover, 
how incessant and powerful are the changes that are 
continually taking place on a vast scale around us ; 
how oxidization and the vicissitudes of cold and 
heat are keeping the world of apparently inanimate 
matter in a state that, could we see it as it is, would 
present a scene of the liveliest animation. 

And, finally, we have to remind ourselves that all 
these analogies are perhaps useful only as illustrate 



/ 184 WHAT IS REALITY? 

ing a condition of relative immobility ; that there 
is, probably, no such thing as absolute rest. The 
molecules of solids are not thought of by science as 
isolated particles, but are believed to be constantly 
moving bodies that determine each other's orbits by 
their mutual attractions. And, further, all solids 
are convertible into gases, — a form in which their 
molecules, according to the kinetic theory of gases, 
resemble "a swarm of innumerable solid particles 
incessantly moving about with different velocities 
in rectilinear paths of all conceivable directions." 

To get on with our argument, then, let us assume 
that a hylozoic view of the world is admissible, and 
proceed to determine its bearings upon the mechan- 
ical theory. Does it materially alter the situation 
as regards that theory? It certainly does. For 
these two categories, mechanism and mind, if they 
are coextensive in the universe, cannot dwell to- 
gether on an equal footing. It is true that the phys- 
ical realists would have us believe that they can ; 
and Mr. Spencer thinks that he has so presented 
them to us in his philosophy. It seems to him that 
he has given both these aspects of reality an impar- 
tial treatment and an equal standing when he pre- 
sents us with the conclusion that there is one in- 
scrutable reality, and that this manifests itself to us 
with two faces, that cannot by any effort of the im- 
agination be reconciled with each other. But, as 
matter of fact, these two aspects do not stand on the 
same level in the dynamics of his philosophy. All 
the movement in his system is obtained by treating 
the objective, mechanical side as the representative 



MECHANISM TRANSFORMED. 185 

of the causative element, and the subjective side as 
the effect. 

His evolution proceeds upon the assumption that 
force is antecedent to mind, — that force without 
mind has elaborated a large part of the world as we 
see it, and then has given birth to mind. It is true 
that he seems sometimes to state the opposite belief, 
as when he says: " On tracing up from its low 
and vague beginnings the intelligence which becomes 
so marvelous in the highest beings, we find that, 
under whatever aspect contemplated, it presents a 
progressive transformation of like nature with the 
progressive transformation we trace in the universe 
as a whole. , ' But when he illustrates this thought 
he goes no further back than the simplest forms of 
the nervous system ; and all through the earlier 
part of the evolution the physical aspect is treated 
as a physical reality that, working by itself, per- 
forms wonders, without any assistance from the 
mental aspect. Mr. Herbert's remark on the use 
that Mr. Spencer makes of his two aspects seems to 
me a most just one. He says : " It seems fair to 
describe the objective face [as used in the " Syn- 
thetic Philosophy "] as essential, and the subjective 
as non-essential." 1 

Take away, now, from the realistic philosophy 
this unwarrantable assumption of the efficient nature 
of the mechanical side of things ; recognize clearly, 
in accordance with the law of continuity, that it had 
no precedence of the mental side in the order of 

1 Modern Realism Examined, by Thomas Martin Herbert, M. A., 
p. 85. 



186 WHAT IS REALITY? 

time, and the whole view of things elaborated by 
this philosophy vanishes. If the mental and the 
mechanical side coexisted from the beginning, we are 
obliged to assume a subordination of principles of 
an exactly opposite kind from that implied in phys- 
ical realism. The two categories cannot stand on an 
equal footing. The category of mind, as we have 
elsewhere argued, is the category of causation. It 
is from our subjective consciousness of the originat- 
ing power of mind, and from this alone, that we 
have derived the idea of cause. 

If, then, there has been, from the beginning, a 
psychical element, this must be regarded as the 
cause ; and the mechanical aspect of the world, as 
the form which that cause assumes when viewed 
from the outside. There is here no hiatus between 
mind and mechanism like that which appears in the 
schemes of physical realism. We do not have to 
say that there are two faces of reality, having a 
" difference that transcends all other differences," 
two manifestations of an inscrutable reality that "no 
effort enables us to assimilate." On the contrary, 
we have the reality, the efficient element of the 
world, manifesting itself in a character that is per- 
fectly homogeneous with mind as made known in 
our experience, but having the quality of calculable 
action in an extreme degree. 

Nor is this all that we gain for scientific coher- 
ency by doing justice to the principle of continuity. 
Having cleared our consciences with regard to this 
law, the prospect brightens, like the path of the 
just, at every onward step. A difficulty equally 



MECHANISM TEANSFOBMEI). 187 

fundamental with the one we have been discussing 
troubles the physical realists in view of the law of 
evolution. For if we postulate inanimate atoms 
and forces as the original essential realities of the 
world, it is not only impossible to evolve mind from 
them, it is impossible to evolve anything. And this 
is a fact, although Mr. Spencer's philosophy appeals 
to us as a system founded upon evolution. Let us 
see how the mechanical and the evolutional concep- 
tions of the world stand related to each other his- 
torically and logically. 

Evolution found the scientific world possessed by 
the mechanical idea. This in its purity took no 
note of origins, or of a process of becoming in the 
world. It viewed the world as an independent 
mechanism, complete in itself, — a mechanism that 
had been struck out all at once, each part depen- 
dent, from the beginning, upon every other part. 
In opposition to this view, evolution concentrated 
attention upon the thought of the world as a 
mechanism that in the beginning was no mechanism, 
but an aggregate of homogeneous atoms and vary- 
ing forces. The mechanism had been slowly elabo- 
rated by successive modifications that had at length 
resulted in great complexity. This view was not 
altogether new. It had held a place, in speculative 
philosophy, alongside of the mechanical concept, 
without coming to any definite terms with it. But 
the prominence and positiveness into which it was 
brought by the hypothesis of evolution made some 
sort of an adjustment between it and its rival im- 
perative. 



188 WHAT IS REALITY? 

The mechanical theory, whether fitted to express 
the new phase of reality or not, must assert its in- 
clusion of it, or forfeit its claim to all-comprehen- 
siveness. Mr. Spencer's philosophy is this asser- 
tion. He employs, from the beginning, a method 
that handicaps all honest investigation of phenom- 
ena, by prescribing in advance what their testi- 
mony shall be. If it chances not to be thus and so, 
it must be ruled out as false. The principle is thus 
stated in the " Synthetic Philosophy : " " The task 
before us, then, is that of exhibiting the phenomena 
of evolution in synthetic order. . . . And it has to 
be shown that this universality of process results 
from the same necessity which determines each sim- 
plest movement around us, down to the accelerated 
fall of a stone or the recurrent beat of a harp-string. 
In other words, the phenomena of evolution have to 
be deduced from the persistence of force. To this 
an ultimate analysis brings us down, and on this a 
rational synthesis must build up." 1 

I have ventured to italicize the words have to be 
and must in this quotation, because Mr. Spencer's 
scheme of evolution hangs by its whole weight upon 
them. If it is true that the doctrine of the " per- 
sistence of force " is an exhaustive expression of the 
known reality of the world, then we may proceed as 
he has done. The phenomena of evolution can have 
nothing to say for themselves. They must fit into 
the grooves prescribed for them. They are like a 
consignment of emigrants whose indentures of bond- 
age have been signed and sealed in advance. Any 
1 First Principles, see. 147. 



MECHANISM TBANSFORMED. 189 

apparent protests they may offer are not to be at- 
tended to. In fact, they must not be regarded as 
protests at all, but as expressions of perfect satis- 
faction in a language which we do not altogether 
understand. 

But if, on the other hand, as we have argued in 
our earlier chapters, it is contrary to reason and 
experience to assume that the doctrine of energy is 
exhaustive of known reality, then the phenomena of 
evolution are entitled to a new trial, in which their 
testimony shall be received without a prejudgment 
of what it must or of what it must not be. 

But, it may be urged, Mr. Spencer does not 
mean to affirm that the phenomena of evolution 
must be forced into the terms of his ultimate prin- 
ciple ; on the contrary, he claims that they can be 
deduced from it, and that his philosophy is a sat- 
isfactory explanation of the genesis of all known 
reality. True, this is his claim. But we have al- 
ready shown that one half of reality refuses to be so 
derived, and now it remains for us to show, more 
particularly, that the other half is equally recal- 
citrant; in short, that none of the phenomena of 
evolution can be deduced from the doctrine of the 
persistence of force; that they must all either be 
perverted and made to appear what they are not, or 
be stated in terms other than those of mechanism. 

There is only one way by which the world-process 
can be made to appear purely mechanical \ that is, q 
by postulating an aggregate of homogeneous atoms as 
its antecedent. Unless we have this common stand- 
ard of unity, the problem is not a purely mechanical 



190 WHAT IS REALITY? 

one. But having it, and nothing else, how are we 
going to get diversity out of it ? With force acting 
upon homogeneous atoms, we can get no differences 
other than those of number and position. No mat- 
ter how unequally the force may be applied, or how 
variously the atoms may be combined, the results 
must always remain homogeneous. No differentia- 
tion of qualities can be reached through the merely 
formal variation produced by force, conceived of as 
acting from without upon homogeneous units. In 
order to get started on that career of qualitative va- 
riation which constitutes evolution, we must assume a 
difference of original nature to the units. Whether 
these be regarded as material atoms, or as mere cen- 
tres of force, they must be intrinsically different. 

But having conceded this original, inner nature to 
the units of combination, the mechanical theory is 
at once so radically modified as to deprive it of all 
its power to exclude agencies other than mechan- 
ical. This theory may, as we have already said, 
legitimately ignore, for its own purposes, the exist- 
ence of this inner nature of things. All it requires 
for its operation is that each unit shall retain the 
same nature when not in combination. But we 
have always to remember that this exclusion of the 
inner nature of things from the field of reality is 
only provisional, not absolute. As Lotze has ex- 
pressed it : " After experience has taught us that 
the internal states of atoms — if such they have — 
exert no modifying influence on the regularity of 
their working, we can leave them out of account as 
regards phenomena, without having at the same 



MECHANISM TRANSFORMED. 191 

time to banish them from our view of the universe. 
On the contrary, further considerations would soon 
bring us back to the idea that forces do not attach 
themselves to a lifeless inner nature of things, but 
must arise out of them ; and that nothing can take 
place between the individual elements until some- 
thing has taken place within them." x 

Grant this conception of an inner nature, with 
manifold possibilities of response, and evolution 
moves on apace. In the contact of atoms so en- 
dowed, we may have innumerable combinations ; 
and every change may be productive of beings or 
substances with new characteristics. But already 
in this conception the mechanical thought is lost 
sight of. We have unwittingly adopted in place of 
it an exceedingly attenuated anthropomorphism. 
The very words response, reaction, — and we can 
find no others to express the idea, — betray the ori- 
gin of our hypothesis. On every side we postulate 
internal movements called out by contact with other 
natures. There is here no stagnation, no rigidity 
of constitution. Each element at the moment of its 
internal change is conceived of as acting. It is, 
during that moment, radically different from what it 
was before, and from what it will be afterward. 

We cannot yet proceed to make an application of 
this view to the problems of philosophy or theology ; 
for there are other important considerations that 
must first be laid before the reader. Up to this point 
we have reached the following conclusions : We 
have seen that we must accept mind as a distinctive 

1 Microcosmus, vol. i. p. 49. 



192 WHAT IS BEAUTY t 

reality of the world. We have seen, further, that, 
if mind is real^ it cannot be an excrescence, an ex- 
ternal product of one part of the world-process ; but 
that it must be the inmost essential reality of things, 
the very spring of the process itself. And, lastly, 
we have seen that there is the same reason for pos- 
tulating the continuity and universality of mind 
that there is for assuming the continuity of force. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

UNITY IN MULTIPLICITY. 

There are real things in the world that are more 
difficult to conceive of than atomic souls. In its ab- 
solute unity, in its spontaneity, and in its diversity 
of operation, the hypothetical atom corresponds very 
closely to that which the soul believes itself to be. 
The ego, in the light of self-consciousness, is one and 
indivisible. The diversity of its activities never sug- 
gests a real diversity of being. It always stands in 
the imagination as a thing quite apart from the or- 
gans of the body, which seem to be the instruments 
of its will. The atom, therefore, indivisible, spon- 
taneous, and varied in its activities, is no inapt sym- 
bol of the soul as known to itself. Indeed, so far as 
the combination of these particular qualities is con- 
cerned, it would be impossible to find another as 
good. 

But that aspect of reality which the soul exhibits 
to itself is not the only one that must be taken into 
the account. Unit as it is, its unity is somehow co- 
incident with an amazing complexity, — a complex- 
ity that admits of analysis. And though we have 
resolved to regard the elementary atoms of the world 
as beings, the problem of the unity of the soul is as 
far from solution as ever. In fact, the concept we 



194 WHAT IS REALITY* 

iiave applied to the interpretation of atoms seems to 
rend *,r them quite unavailable for the construction 
of an organically connected world. The very es- 
sence of soul life, from this point of view, is isolation 
and independence. 

So profoundly was the mind of the great Leibnitz 
impressed with these characteristics of being, when 
he constructed his theory of the world as an aggre- 
gate of atomic souls, that he represented these souls 
as leading absolutely separate lives. There is, he 
supposes, no real action of one upon another. Each 
carries within itself the reason of its own changes. 
Everything that takes place in a monad is the devel- 
opment of its individual, unstimulated activity. To 
account, then, for the diversities of being, he made 
his atomic souls, or monads, of various orders, ran- 
ging from the Supreme Being, the source of all other 
monads, to souls having no self-consciousness. And 
to account for the appearance of interaction between 
these beings, he invented the hypothesis of a pre- 
established harmony, arranged in the beginning by 
the Creator. The internal development of each 
monad was said to be so adjusted to that of all other 
monads as to produce the false impression that they 
are mutually influenced by each other. In short, he 
tried to harmonize the facts of the world by redu- 
cing one great class of them to illusion, ■ — a method 
with which we are familiar, but which our philoso- 
phy sedulously avoids. 

All that we know about the nature of the soul is 
derived, in the first instance, from our knowledge of 
the human soul. And this, as we shall hope to con- 



UNITY IN MULTIPLICITY. 195 

vince the reader, is known to us not simply as a 
unit, but as a unit that rests upon and embraces 
within itself an untold multitude of beings. If, there- 
fore, we would use the ego for the interpretation of 
the universe, we must always carry with us these 
two conjoined, though not harmonized, aspects of its 
reality. Thus far, we have found in the atom a 
symbol of the soul's unity. Now let us ask, do we 
in the combination of atoms find a symbol of its 
unity in multiplicity ? I think we do. Our elemen- 
tary atom does not maintain an isolated, independent 
existence. It combines with others, not simply in 
the union of an external association, but in the real 
union, which gives rise to another individual. 

For instance, we have two highly inflammable 
gases, hydrogen and oxygen. Two atoms of the for- 
mer combine with one of the latter to make a mole- 
cule of water. The hydrogen seems to have surren- 
dered its individuality, and the oxygen has likewise 
lost its identity. But in their place we have an 
absolutely new unit, with a nature that bears no 
resemblance whatever to either of its constituents. 
What has become of the atoms ? Have they been 
destroyed ? It appears not ; for they can be brought 
back again, absolutely unchanged by the transfor- 
mations through which they have passed ; they have 
lost nothing, they have gained nothing, they have 
remembered nothing. And what shall we think of 
the new unit, the molecule of water ? Is it an arch- 
being, containing within itself three subordinate be- 
ings ? Who can say ? There are more things in 
heaven and earth than can be pictured to our ima- 



196 WHAT IS BEALITYf 

ginations. We might, indeed, guess that in stable 
combinations, like this, the consciousness of the 
atoms is suspended, and that until some further 
chemical change arouses them to activity, they rest 
as in a deep sleep. 

But of the molecule of water we must postulate a 
real individuality. In many diverse relations it acts 
as a unit. In steam it separates itself from other 
molecules and takes on the appearance of an iso- 
lated, independent being, pursuing its individual 
ends with great energy. In water it appears, still in 
motion, but with movements coordinated to that of 
other molecules, with which it forms a homogeneous, 
mutually attracting aggregate. And again in the 
form of a solid it enters into that class of relations 
to which Lotze refers when he finds himself " con- 
strained to conceive extended matter as a system of 
unextended beings that, by their forces, fix one an- 
other's position in space, and by the resistance which 
they offer — as if to the intrusion of a stranger — to 
any attempt to make them change their place, pro- 
duce the phenomena of impenetrability, and the 
continuous occupation of space." 1 When entering 
into this latter state, moreover, molecules display, 
in crystallization, phenomena that suggest instinct. 
Obedient to some magnetic or other influence, they 
arrange themselves in those definite structural forms 
of great beauty with which snowflakes and frost have 
made us familiar. 

Some compound molecules, again, act as units in 
the formation of other substances of greater com- 

1 Microcosmus, i. 358. 



UNITY IN MULTIPLICITY. 197 

plexity. As compound radicals, they associate them- 
selves with elementary atoms and produce molecules 
that are composed in some cases of more than one 
hundred atoms. Carbon atoms unite thus with each 
other to form groups of great stability that act as 
radicals. These, Professor Cooke tells us, "may be 
regarded as the skeletons of the organic compounds. 
Locked together, like so many vertebras, these carbon 
atoms form the framework to which the other ele- 
mentary atoms are fastened, and it is thus that the 
complex molecular structures, of which organized 
beings consist, are rendered possible." 1 

Now there is certainly nothing in all this to com- 
pel the belief that molecules are beings. Not every 
closely related assemblage of units constitutes a new 
unit ; and it is impossible for us to determine, in 
every case, whether what we are contemplating is a 
real union or merely an association. It might be 
urged that if molecules are beings, then crystals, 
which are an assemblage of molecules having definite 
structural relations to a common centre, or axis, 
should be regarded as beings also. But, on the other 
hand, it might be shown that the phenomena of crys- 
tallization imply no real union of a multitude in a 
higher unity, but a symmetrically connected aggre- 
gation, that finds its analogue in a colony of closely 
related beings. 

But we cannot demonstrate the non-existence of 
individuality in a crystal, nor its existence in a mole- 
cule ; it is all a question of the fitness of analogies. 
It was in obedience to the law of continuity that we 

1 The New Chemistry, p. 312, 



198 WHAT IS REALITY? 

ventured to postulate the existence of atomic souls ; 
and it is in obedience to the same law that we see 
in molecules an illustration of that unity in multipli- 
city that characterizes being in its highest manifes- 
tations. But we are at present laboring under a dis- 
advantage with the reader. Our reasons will become 
more apparent as we ascend the biological scale ; 
aud this we will now proceed to do. 

Organic molecules combine to form living organ- 
isms. The least complex of these appear to us as 
single nucleated cells. They are sometimes called 
simple or homogeneous. But that these are only 
relative terms is demonstrated by the great complex- 
ity of their behavior. So much has been recently 
written upon the marvels of adaptation displayed by 
these microscopic beings that we need not dwell long 
upon the subject. M. Alfred Binet, who has made 
a most elaborate study of them, leaves the existence 
of consciousness an open question, but he contributes 
the following facts that bear upon it. He finds in 
these beings — 

1. " Perception of the external object." 

2. " Choice made between a number of objects." 

3. " Perception of their position in space." 

4. " Movements, calculated either to approach 
the body and seize it, or to flee from it." 

This is an exceedingly modest set of deductions 
from the facts set before us by their author. For 
instance : " The didinium knows precisely the posi- 
tion of the prey it follows, for it takes aim at the 
object of its pursuit like a marksman, and trans- 
pierces it with its nettle-like darts." Another spe- 



UNITY IN MULTIPLICITY. 199 

cies exhibits all the appearance of a voluntary and 
intelligent combination on the part of individuals for 
the attainment of a common end. " The bodo cau- 
datus is a voracious flagellate possessed of extraor- 
dinary audacity ; it combines in troops to attack an- 
imalculae one hundred times as large as itself, as the 
colpods for instance, which are veritable giants when 
placed alongside of the bodo. Like a horse attacked 
by a pack of wolves, the colpod is soon rendered 
powerless. Twenty, thirty, forty bodos throw them- 
selves upon him, eviscerate and devour him com- 
pletely." 1 

Rising, now, another step on the scale, we come to 
communities formed of a number of connected cells, 
in which each individual is like every other. Here 
we have a suggestion of unity in multiplicity ; but it 
appears, in fact, to be only a closely connected asso- 
ciation of beings. The following account of such an 
association is given by the writer above mentioned : 
" In the genus volvox, colonies are found of which 
the structure is very complicated. Such are the 
great green balls formed by the aggregation of di- 
minutive organisms, which form the surface of the 
sphere, and are joined together by their envelopes ; 
they have each two flagella, which pass through the 
inclosing membrane and swing unimpeded on the 
outside ; the envelopes, each tightly holding the 
other, form hexagonal figures exactly like the cells 
of a honeycomb. Each volvox is at liberty within 
its own envelope; but it projects protoplasmic ex- 
tensions which pass through its cuticle and place it 

1 The Psychic Life of Micro-Organisms, p. 60. 



4 20Q WHAT IS REALITY t 

in communication with its neighbor. It is probable 
that these protoplasmic filaments act like so many- 
telegraphic threads to establish a network of com- 
munication among all the individuals of the same 
colony. It is necessary, in fact, that these diminu- 
tive organisms be in communication with each other 
in order that their flagella may move in unison, and 
that the entire colony may act as a unit and in obe- 
dience to a single impulse." 1 

Passing on from communities in which all the cells 
are alike, we come next to those in which there is 
some degree of differentiation and division of labor. 
In the dioecian volvox, the female cellules are all 
joined together in one colony, and the male in 
another. In the male colony every individual is 
alike, but in the female there are neutral cellules 
which are not designed for fecundation, but which 
simply perform a locomotive function. " Equipped 
with one eye and two flagella, they are intended to 
move the great colonial ball ; they are the oarsmen 
of the colony." 

Our next step is a long one. The colony of the 
volvox, as we have seen, exists as a sphere. It 
never gets beyond this form. But the hydra exists 
as an open sac, the inside of which is composed of 
cells that not only differ from those of the outside, 
but also perform very different functions in the 
economy of the organism. When we have reached 
this stage we are, without any question, contemplat- 
ing a permanent organism, composed of a multitude 
of lesser organisms, — a single being that exists by 

1 The Psychic Life of Micro-Organisms, p. 57. 



UNITY IN MULTIPLICITY. 201 

the combined action of other beings, varying from 
each other in form and function. We may there- 
fore turn from the consideration of the taxonomic 
series to that of the ontogenetic ; and study the in- 
creasing complexity of being as it appears in those 
stages that succeed each other in the life history of 
each individual of a higher species. 

Every animal, man included, is at the outset a 
single nucleated cell. The first step in the upward 
development of this individual is its division into 
two, by a process called segmentation. This process 
continues till we have a multitude of cells, every one 
of which is like the other. The form which these 
cells take in animals belonging to all the chief 
groups is called a planula. It is a form that calls 
to mind the spherical colony of volvox just con- 
sidered. It is described by Professor Huxley as a 
central space around which the aggregate of cells is 
disposed as a coat or envelope, the inside being 
filled with fluid. 

The next stage is the transformation of this fluid- 
filled vesicle into an open-mouthed sac. This is 
done not by opening the planula, but by a process 
called invagination. Its wall, the blastoderm, is 
gradually pushed in on one side. Mr. Spencer has 
made this process very easy to understand by the 
following illustration : " Take a small india-rubber 
ball, not of the inflated kind, nor of the solid kind, 
but of the kind about an inch or so in diameter 
with a small hole, through which, under pressure, 
the air escapes. Suppose that, instead of consisting 
of india-rubber, its wall consists of small cells, made 



202 WHAT IS REALITY? 

polyhedral in form by mutual pressure, and united 
together. This will represent the blastoderm. Now, 
with the finger, thrust in one side of the ball until 
it touches the other, so making a cup. This action 
will stand for the process of invagination. Imag- 
ine that by continuance of it, the hemispherical cup 
becomes very much deepened, and the opening nar- 
rowed, until the cup becomes a sac, of which the 
introverted wall is everywhere in contact with the 
outer wall." * 

This two-layered sac is called a gastrula. It is 
permanently represented among living forms by the 
hydra, which we have just considered, with the ad- 
dition of tentacles around the opening of the sac, 
which serves the animal for a mouth. But now, in 
the embryos of higher animals, a layer of cells 
makes its appearance between the outer and the in- 
ner walls. While the process of introversion is 
taking place, and before the two surfaces have come 
in contact, cells are budded off from one or the 
other, or both, to form this third class of cells, that 
are quite different in their characteristics from 
either of the others. At this stage, then, we have 
an organism consisting of three classes of cells or 
beings. But this is only the foundation for a new 
series of transformations ; for each of these classes, 
by the same process of multiplication and differ- 
entiation, gives rise to a number of other classes. 
From the outer layer, the epiblast, is developed the 
epidermis and the whole nervous system. From 
the inside layer, the hypoblast, springs the nutritive 

1 The Factors of Organic Evolution, by Herbert Spencer, p. 64. 



UNITY IN MULTIPLICITY. 203 

system, and the lining of the air-tubes of the lungs ; 
and from the middle layer, the mesoblast, are de- 
rived the blood-vessels, muscles, bones, etc. Thus, 
by repeated transformations, the most heterogeneous 
results are reached. 

This is one aspect of the process ; but now we 
must take note of another, that is no less wonderful. 
Out of this ever-increasing diversity there emerges, 
how we can never imagine, an ever-increasing unity. 
In the case of a human being, it is represented by 
the intelligent, self-conscious, self-asserting ego. 
This unmistakably real person comes more and 
more prominently into view, while the individuality 
of the constituent beings sinks out of sight. As 
soon as we turn to this more familiar view, it seems 
as if the one to which we have been giving our at- 
tention must be an illusion, founded upon some 
mistaken analogy. But can it be so ? Our first 
cell is a real being, to which we have every reason 
to impute a degree of sensibility and consciousness. 
Our second and third and following cells, made 
from the first, seem to be duplicates of it. If the 
individual cell-life ceases, at what point does it 
cease ? 

Shall we make the hypothesis that the individual 
life of cells comes to an end when the main work of 
organization is completed ? that, as soon as they be- 
come 7ZO?i-progressive, they, as it were, surrender to 
the ego their psychic life, and are henceforth its 
mechanical instruments? We might, indeed, con- 
jecture that this ought to be the course of events, 
but there is no evidence to show that it is. On the 



204 WHAT IS REALITY f 

contrary, there is much to show that the individual 
cell-life, in its semi-independence, continues in full 
force. 

The most striking illustrations of this are to be 
found in those classes of cells that most readily sug- 
gest detached organisms, by the freedom of their 
movements, and by the means used for the captur- 
ing of food. Speaking of the walls of the intes- 
tines, M. Alfred Binet says : " They are covered 
with epithelial cells, each of which is an organism 
endowed with a complex of properties. The proto- 
plasm of these cells lays hold of food by an act of 
prehension, exactly as the ciliate infusoria and other 
unicellular organisms do, that lead an independent 
life. In the intestines of cold-blooded animals the 
cells emit prolongations which seize the minute drops 
of fatty matter, and carrying into the protoplasm of 
the cell, convey them thence into the chylif active 
ducts." Another mode of absorption of fatty mat- 
ters, met with among cold-blooded as well as warm- 
blooded animals, is described as follows : " The lym- 
phatic cells pass out from the adenoid tissue which 
contains them, so that upon arriving at the surface 
of the intestines they seize the particles of fatty mat- 
ter there present, and, laden with their prey, make 
their way back to the lymphatics." 

Of another class of cells, the white globules of 
the blood, we know that they lead a life almost as 
independent as that of the wholly separate amoeba. 
Bent on errands of their own, they swim through 
the veins and arteries, gaining their own livelihood, 
and contributing in some way to the well-being of 



UNITY IN MULTIPLICITY. 205 

the community. It is surmised that they constitute 
a sort of patrol corps, the members of which, passing 
up and down the system, arrest and digest suspi- 
cious foreigners that may have found their way into 
its life currents. Spirited encounters between them 
and the flagella-armed microbes of malaria have 
been described by eyewitnesses. Of still another 
class of cells we know that the individuals detach 
themselves from the organism for the continuance 
of the race by the production of other organisms, 
and we know, further, that each one of these goes 
freighted with a potentiality of constructive power 
that, from the start, bankrupts the imagination that 
would seek to follow it. 

But "now, let us observe, freedom of locomotion 
is not the only or most impressive evidence of indi- 
vidual psychic efficiency. The greater part of the 
thinking and planning and directing among human 
beings is done by sedentary individuals to whom lo- 
comotion is an unimportant incident. 

Millions of nerve cells lead a sedentary but most 
active life within the organism. Each occupies its 
own settled position, but all are so linked together 
by nerve fibres that each one is in communication 
with the whole cell-system. At first sight this sys- 
tem would seem to be more correctly described as 
composed of homogeneous matter, differently distrib- 
uted ; some in masses, and some drawn out into deli- 
cate fibres, that convey energy between the masses 
as electricity is conducted on wires. But a more 
careful investigation reveals the fact that both the 
masses and the fibres are composed of individuals. 



206 WHAT IS REALITY f 

The fibres are a connected series of elongated cells, 
and the masses are an agglomeration of cells, differ- 
ing both in form and function from those of the 
fibres. This division into two great classes is, how- 
ever, only the beginning of the differences that ex- 
ist, — differences that are made known to us not 
simply by the outward appearance of the cells. For 
though these vary much, both in size and form, the 
material of which they are composed appears, to 
chemical tests as well as to the eye, to be the same 
everywhere. It is only by their behavior that we 
know them to have characteristics that separate 
them widely from each other, both as species and 
individuals within the species. 

The case is the same as with germs. All ani- 
mals start from germs, that so closely resemble each 
other that it is impossible to say what kind of an 
animal each one is destined to produce. But not- 
withstanding this similarity, we know that one has 
in it the possibilities of a most elaborate organism, 
consisting of millions of cells, each one differing 
from all the others ; while another has in it only 
the most simple constructive powers. From this 
we infer a complexity of structure in germs just as 
certainly as if we could see it. It is not otherwise 
with the apparent simplicity and uniformity of nerve 
cells. One elaborate set is connected with the sense 
of sight, another with that of hearing, another with 
that of smelling. Now if we apply the very same 
stimulus to each one of these sets in turn, the result 
will be three very different sensations. 

The following is, in substance, a quotation from 



UNITY IN MULTIPLICITY. 207 

Dr. Ewald Hering's account of the matter. If in 
a perfectly dark room the nerves of the eye are ir- 
ritated by an electric current, the sensation of light 
is produced; but if we pass an electric current 
through the auditory nerve in an absolutely silent 
room, we hear sounds. Or if, again, the current is 
applied to the nerves of the skin, the sensation of 
heat and cold is experienced, although we are not 
in contact with any cold or warm object 5 and if by 
the very same current we excite the nerves of the 
tongue, gustatory sensations are produced. 

In view of these facts Hering, accepting Johannes 
Miiller's theory of the specific energies of the sen- 
sory nerves, makes the following statement 1 " The 
diverse structures of the nervous system, the nerve 
cells and the nerve fibres, are internally different 
in spite of all external similarity ; and the diversity 
of the sensations produced is a manifestation of such 
difference." 1 And in another place, speaking of the 
educating influence to which nerve cells are sub- 
jected by means of their manifold anatomical con- 
nections, he says : " Every single cerebral element, 
in the course of its development and under the influ- 
ence of sensory experiences, attains an individual 
character. And it may be asserted that not even 
two of the innumerable cerebral cells are alike in 
kind and degree of individual energy." 

But it may be said, mere difference of constitu- 
tion does not carry with it the necessity of inferring 
consciousness. Why should we not limit ourselves 

1 An Address on The Specific Energies of the Nervous System. 
Translated for the Open Court, December 22, 1887, 



208 WHAT IS REALITY? 

to a chemical expression of the phenomena ? When 
a nerve cell responds to a stimulus, it is simply the 
reduction of an exceedingly unstable compound to 
simpler elements. And if the responses are differ- 
ent, why should we not ascribe all such differences 
to variations of chemical composition ? Our reply is 
that, however correct an account of the matter this 
may be from one point of view, it is not exhaustive. 
All consciousness in the human ego is also condi- 
tioned upon chemical changes. But in self-con- 
sciousness we have revealed to us another side of 
the process ; and the more intimately we become 
acquainted with cell-life, the more necessary does it 
seem to reason analogically from the human ego to 
the hypothetical cell ego. 

We know that a cell consists of a protoplasmic 
body and a nucleus ; and that this nucleus somehow 
exerts a controlling and modifying influence over the 
cell as an organism. This suggestion of a relation 
of parts or organs, similar to that existing between 
the human brain and the rest of the organism, might 
not in itself be considered important. But there 
is that in the behavior of the nerve cell that strongly 
suggests the most distinctive characteristic of mind ; 
that is, self-control. A normal cell when stimu- 
lated does not react to exhaustion, but responds by 
measure. Just as a person chooses to be more or 
less indifferent to one set of influences while re- 
sponding freely to another, so also it seems to be 
with nerve cells. This power of inhibition, as it 
is called, differs in cells and groups of cells as 
much as persons differ in temperament, and there is 



UNITY IN MULTIPLICITY. 209 

every indication that it is a phenomenon of exactly 
the same nature as that which convinces us that we 
are, to a certain extent, responsible beings. 

We cannot dwell longer on this aspect of the sub- 
ject, and we will therefore close it with the follow- 
ing statement of results given by Dr. Ewald He- 
ring, in the address already referred to : u Millions 
of the minutest separately existing beings, different 
in shape and external structure, compose a systemat- 
ically arranged aggregate, thus forming the diverse 
organs ; and these beings, in spite of the compli- 
cated interdependence, lead quite separate lives, for 
each single being is an animated centre of activity. 
The human body does not receive the impulse of life 
like a machine from one point, but each single atom 
of the different organs bears its vitalizing power in 
itself." 

We must now return to the ego, upon which we 
have been, for some time, turning our backs. What 
has this multitude of beings to do with it ? or it 
with them ? As we very well know, it has no con- 
scious relations with them, though it lives and thinks 
by means of them. Yet the ego has conscious re- 
lations with the body. Its organs are its servants, 
which it intelligently directs for its uses. In other . 
words, while it does not deal singly with the indi- 
viduals of its great empire, it does deal with them 
as organized groups. According to their special 
functions, the individuals are organized in such man- 
ner that each group presents something the same 
aspect of unity in diversity that characterizes the 
larger organism. As we have already seen, the in- 



210 WHAT IS REALITY? 

dividuals that have to do with the sense of hearing 
are organized in a system by themselves. Those 
that serve the sense of sight form another system ; 
and those that serve the sense of touch still another. 
And, somehow, there is a unity of action in each 
system, — a coordination, by means of which the 
activities of a diversified multitude are combined for 
the achievement of very definite ends. 

The same appearance of separate yet organized 
and harmonious action characterizes those bodily 
functions that are less closely related to our conscious- 
ness. The beating of the heart, the movements of 
the lungs, and other complicated activities we call 
automatic. That is, they seem to take care of their 
own affairs, without assistance from the central con- 
sciousness. The situation is thus described by Mr. 
G. H. Lewes : " The actions of the organism are 
many, various, but interconnected. Some are un- 
apparent (to consciousness), others are apparent. 
Some are the components of combined results not 
separately recognized ; others are groups which seem 
independent of each other. All the actions which 
go to form the group respiration are vital actions, 
though we only consider their result. Respiration is, 
or it seems to be, an action independent of digestion ; 
and locomotion, a group independent of both. It is 
thus, also, with mental actions. They have a rela- 
tive independence and an absolute interdependence." l 

It might naturally be expected that the actuality 
of these seemings, if they have a ground of reality, 
ought to be traced by anatomy not only to the dif- 

1 Mind as a Function of the Organism, see. 165. 



UNITY IN MULTIPLICITY. 211 

ferent sets of muscles that serve the purposes of 
each group, but further to the separate combina- 
tions of nerve cells, fibres, and ganglia that are the 
specific brain of each. This, however, can be done 
only to a very limited extent. The nervous system 
of man, even to our modern anatomy, remains little 
better than a maze of unexplained intricacies. 

For an illustration of the greatest independence 
of nerve centres we have to go to the lower animals. 
For instance, when certain insects are cut in two, 
the anterior section will continue to exercise its 
appropriate function of devouring, as if nothing 
had happened. And others, when treated in the 
same way, will show as great and as discerning an 
activity in the posterior half. Praying crickets will 
pursue successfully the quests dictated by their gen- 
erative instincts for days after their heads have been 
removed; and the two halves of a divided earwig 
will turn against one another and contend furiously 
with their antennae so long as strength remains. 
Anatomy shows that this extreme degree of inde- 
pendence is owing to the existence of separate, 
slightly connected centres of nervous energy. And 
in the brains of the higher animals we have what 
appears to be an aggregation of more or less sepa- 
rate ganglia connected by nerve fibres. The spinal 
cord seems to be a series of ganglia which have 
coalesced. That a central organ may be thus com- 
posed from a number of more independent ganglia 
is shown in the metamorphosis of insects. Ganglia 
that appear in the larva state as separate are found 
to be consolidated at a more advanced stage of de- 
velopment. 



212 WHAT IS REALITY? 

Ill the human organism, each one of these centres 
seems like a separate bureau that is superintended 
by its own head, and served by its own particular 
staff of officers. The central consciousness may 
considerably modify and interfere with these sepa- 
rate departments, but it can never assume their 
functions. It sustains them, defends them ; to a 
certain extent it regulates times and seasons. It can 
quicken or retard their motions. Some of them it 
can direct, modify, and educate. But if they stop 
working, it cannot supply their places by its own 
skill. It is as if, all along the process of organi- 
zation, heads of departments were evolved con- 
comitantly with the departments themselves, spe- 
cialized souls to superintend and regulate special 
organs and functions. The greatest degree of inde- 
pendence exists in those on which vitality depends, 
and which we share in common with lower organ- 
isms. The external appearance and movements of 
some of these very strongly suggest creatures with 
whose independent existence we are familiar. The 
movements of the intestines have the most remark- 
able resemblance to the creeping of a worm, the 
great difference being that the worm propels itself 
forward on its support, while the intestines, being 
fastened, push along the masses of food and the 
faeces. 

Contrasted, in point of independence, with the 
foregoing class, are the faculties that have sprung 
up in connection with the conscious purposive efforts 
of the central intelligence. Certain departments 
of the nervous organization, while they come to us 



UNITY IN MULTIPLICITY. 213 

ready-formed for action, are yet to a great extent 
dependent for their usefulness upon the education 
and guidance they receive from the conscious ego. 
One after another the senses offer their services to 
the undeveloped soul that has been awakened to 
conscious life through their intervention. At first 
the soul has to learn the language which they speak. 
It is like an infant surrounded by nurses and in- 
structors able to impart far more than the pupil is 
capable of appropriating. But, anon, the soul grows, 
and the former instructors become its willing and 
faithful servants. Having assumed control, it di- 
rects the energies of these skilled dependents in 
channels that are more or less new and strange to 
them. 

The soul wills that it shall know how to read. 
Eyes and fingers are there to help it to accomplish 
this end. But they can do nothing of themselves. 
The ego must begin the work by intelligently fixing 
its attention upon the task, while it assumes the 
r61e of instructor. This it does, slowly at first, ad- 
vancing by successive steps. But there comes a 
time when all this painstaking concentration on the 
part of the central intelligence is dropped because 
it is unnecessary. A subordinate centre of psychic 
activity has assumed the whole business, and does 
it with an ease and quickness that is beyond the 
attainment of a being less specialized. 

It is the same with all our acquired faculties. At 
a certain stage of conscious endeavor, a beneficent 
spirit seems to come to our assistance. We are not 
only relieved of a portion of the labor that formerly 



214 WHAT IS REALITY? 

rested upon us alone, but the new-comer has a facil- 
ity that far transcends anything of which the ego 
gave promise. All the information that flows from 
different sources into this specialized centre is co- 
ordinated with a rapidity that is simply marvelous 
to the reflecting ego. New situations in the envi- 
ronment are seen to have been successfully re- 
sponded to, before the knowledge of their existence 
even had reached headquarters. 

No less impressive is this diversity of operation 
when an overgrown, over-indulged subordinate cen- 
tre has risen to supreme control in the organism, 
having debauched, on its way to power, all the other 
centres. We say that a man has lost all control of 
himself, that he is ruled by a demon ; and perhaps 
we express more nearly than we think, the literal 
truth. The ego is still the more or less intelligent 
being that knows, and at times feels, the abjectness 
of its enslaved position, — that even attempts to re- 
cover its lost sway ; but finds, perhaps too late, that 
all its servants have become insubordinate and 
treacherous. 

But are we not letting imagination run away with 
us ? Do anatomists find any objective evidence of 
the existence of such a plurality of semi-independent 
beings within the organisms ? 

Vivisection has certainly brought to light some 
very remarkable facts bearing upon the question, — 
facts that seem to shut us up to the acceptance 
either of some form of the above belief, or of an 
alternative that, to the great majority of minds, 
presents far greater difficulties. We begin with 



UNITY IN MULTIPLICITY. 215 

the assumption that the brain is the seat of the cen- 
tral ego, — of the consciousness that each one of us 
calls my consciousness. Now if, in experimenting 
with a lower animal, whose brain we also regard as 
the seat of its ego, we find that the phenomena of 
purposive action continue after all connection with 
the brain has been severed, we infer either that the 
brain is not the sole seat of consciousness, or that 
consciousness is only an incidental accompaniment 
of that which we call purposive action. Professor 
Huxley boldly adopts the latter alternative. The 
following is his account of the behavior of a frog 
whose spinal column has been cut across so as to 
destroy all connection between the posterior parts 
and the brain : — 

" Touch the skin of the side of the body with a 
little acetic acid, which gives rise to all the signs of 
great pain in an uninjured frog. In this case there 
can be no pain, because the application is made to a 
part of the skin supplied with nerves which come 
off from the cord below the point of section ; never- 
theless, the frog lifts up the limb of the same side, 
and applies the foot to rub off the acetic acid ; and 
what is still more remarkable, if the limb be held 
so that the frog cannot use it, it will by and by move 
the limb of the other side, turn it across the body, 
and use it for the same rubbing process. It is im- 
possible that the frog, if it were in its entirety and 
could reason, should perform actions more purpo- 
sive than these; and yet we have most complete 
assurance that, in this case, the frog is not acting 
from purpose, has no consciousness, and is a mere 



216 WHAT IS REALITY? 

insensible machine." 1 On the strength of this 
" complete assurance," Professor Huxley would 
carry us on to the reductio ad abswrdum that we 
are laboring under an illusion when we attribute 
any of our purposive actions to consciousness. 

But what kind of a certainty is this on which 
such an astonishing conclusion is based ? All that 
can be certainly affirmed is that the central brain 
consciousness of the frog has no part in the produc- 
tion of these phenomena. But is it not possible 
that the consciousness of a subordinate nerve centre 
has? As we should expect, Professor Huxley has 
not altogether overlooked this possibility. He says : 
" If any one think fit to maintain that the spinal 
cord below the injury is conscious, but that it is cut 
off from any means of making its consciousness 
known to the other consciousness in the brain, there 
is no means of driving him from his position by 
logic. But assuredly there is no way of proving it, 
and in the matter of consciousness, if in anything, 
we may hold by the rule, De non apparentibus et de 
non existentibus eadem est ratio,'' 

Now, it seems to me that the whole matter is 
wrongly stated by Professor Huxley. He says, in 
the same connection, " It is wholly impossible abso- 
lutely to prove the presence or absence of conscious- 
ness in anything but one's own brain" But the 
fact is, one's own brain is just the place where it is 
least possible to prove the presence or absence of 
consciousness. We, as persons, know, though we 
cannot by logic prove, that we are conscious. But 

1 Science and Culture and Other Essays, p. 227. 



UNITY IN MULTIPLICITY. 217 

we have no direct knowledge that our consciousness 
is located in the brain. All the evidence that tends 
to the belief that it is so located has been gathered 
through experimenting on the brains of other ani- 
mals more or less like ourselves. We assume the 
existence of consciousness in them, as Professor 
Huxley has said, through analogy with our own 
self-consciousness. But, on the other hand, we lo- 
cate our individual consciousness in the brain rather 
than elsewhere, through analogy, from what we 
know of others. But the very same kind of evi- 
dence that points to the brain as the principal seat 
of consciousness, points to other nerve centres, situ- 
ated in the spinal cord or elsewhere, as the seats 
of a more or less subordinate consciousness and in- 
telligence. 

I need not stop to analyze the behavior of the 
mutilated frog to prove this to the reader. I will 
only indorse what Professor Huxley affirms with 
regard to it. " It is impossible," he says, " that the 
frog, if it were in its entirety and could reason, 
should perform actions more purposive than these." 
There is just the same reason, therefore, for assum- 
ing consciousness in nerve centres outside the brain, 
as for assuming its existence in the brain. In short, 
the scientific conclusion to be derived from these phe- 
nomena of vivisection by themselves considered is 
plainly this : The brain is not the only seat of con- 
sciousness. 

That this view, or one involving similar results, 
commends itself to eminent physiologists, is well 
known to those who are acquainted with the recent 



218 WHAT IS REALITY? 

writings of M. Alfred Binet. His experiments on 
hysterical patients have produced in his mind the 
conviction that, in them at least, " a plurality of per- 
son exists." Speaking of his own researches in con- 
nection with those of M. Pierre Janet, he says : " We 
have established, almost with certainty, in fact, that 
in such persons (hysterical patients) there exists, 
side by side with the principal personality, a sec- 
ondary personality, which is unknown by the first, 
which sees, hears, reflects, reasons, and acts." 1 And 
referring to the explanation favored by the school to 
which Professor Huxley belongs, he says : " When 
I began my researches I did not hesitate to accept 
it, even contrary to the opinion of my friend M. 
Pierre Janet, who adopted the hypothesis of sub- 
conscious phenomena. But later, according as my 
observations and experiments became more numer- 
ous, I was compelled to abandon the explanation 
founded upon mechanical acts. This, I admit, cost 
me a great deal ; for it is singular to observe how, 
despite ourselves and the desire of being impartial, 
we ever reluctantly surrender a first idea." 

The researches here alluded to have been pursued 
chiefly through experiments on hysterical patients, 
who in certain parts of the body present a more or 
less extended region of insensibility. These regions 
sometimes embrace half the body, sometimes only a 
small spot, sometimes an entire limb. An arm, for 
instance, will become insensible from the extremity 
of the fingers to the shoulder joint. The latter case 
is a specially favorable one for experiments. The 

1 The Open Court, November 7, 1889- 



UNITY IN MULTIPLICITY. 219 

arm, by being passed through a screen, is effectually 
cut off from the observation of the patient ; and its 
absolute insensibility is established beyond a doubt 
by sudden painful excitations. This insensibility 
extends to all the tissues of the limb. Skin, mus- 
cles, tendons, and articular surfaces have lost all 
trace of sensibility. 

Into the hand, thus cut off from connection with 
the central consciousness, a penholder is thrust be- 
tween the thumb and the index finger. " As soon 
as the contact takes place the two fingers draw to- 
gether, as if to seize the pen ; the other fingers bend 
half way, the wrist leans sideways, and the hand 
assumes the attitude necessary to write." Next, the 
insensible hand is seized by the operator and made 
to write a familiar word, the patient's own name, for 
instance ; but in the writing an error of spelling is 
intentionally made. The hand, now left to itself, at 
first preserves its attitude, but after a little interval 
begins to write, and repeats the word, sometimes 
five or ten times. " But, oddly enough, the hand 
betrays a momentary hesitation when it reaches the 
letter at which the error in orthography was com- 
mitted. If a superfluous letter happens to have 
been added, sometimes the hand will hesitatingly re- 
write the name along with the supplementary letter ; 
again, it will retrace only a part of the letter in 
question ; and again, finally, entirely suppress it." 

This is only one of many experiments that have 
helped to establish in the mind of the operator the 
conviction of a plurality of conscious beings within 
the organism. The line of reasoning is in substance 



220 WHAT IS REALITY? 

as follows : The hand that performed the above ac- 
tions was completely severed from the consciousness 
of the ego. The penholder was seized, the writing 
performed, and the mistake corrected altogether in- 
dependently of the central consciousness, which at 
the time was occupied in receiving and attending to 
sensations from the other parts of the body. Every- 
thing seems to indicate that it is quite another per- 
son that has felt the penholder, recognized that it is 
a penholder, adjusted the fingers and hand for the 
use of it, written and rewritten a word suggested 
to it by familiar motions, and finally corrected the 
spelling of the word. The act seems to involve 
perception, reasoning, and intelligent adaptation. 

But the evidence does not end here. For when 
these inferences are tentatively accepted and applied 
to other departments of experience, they receive cor- 
roborative testimony by affording a probable expla- 
nation of phenomena that are otherwise inexplica- 
ble. There are forms of insanity that have every 
appearance of being the usurpation of power by a 
personality within the system, — a personality that, 
in a normal state, would be held in subordination. 
I cannot illustrate this better than by quoting a few 
passages from a recent article in " The Lancet " on 
responsibility in mental disease, — an article that 
has no intentional bearing upon our hypothesis of 
subordinate personalities. 

Speaking of cases in which violent acts are sud- 
denly perpetrated in response to slight provocations, 
Sir James Crichton-Browne says : " In all such 
cases a momentary irritation, . . . instead of being 



UNITY IN MULTIPLICITY. 221 

inhibited in its nascent state, ... is, by the dimin- 
ished resistance of the will, and the consequent over- 
action of the lower centres, permitted to become 
fixed, or to express itself in a grossly exaggerated 
manner." Another form he describes as a " sudden 
and irresistible impulse, which is often a reversion 
to mere animal instinct, with vague or imperfect 
consciousness at the time, obscure remembrance 
afterward, and under a grave paresis of inhibitory 
power." And again he says : " The unreasonable 
obstinacy of lunatics in insane conduct merely indi- 
cates that certain mental functions have escaped the 
regulation of volition, which is enfeebled, and are 
acting in an irregular and self-willed manner." I 
quote these expressions only to show how the phe- 
nomena of insanity impress one who has given great 
attention to them, and who apparently has no par- 
ticular theory to support. 'They have reference to 
the most common forms of insanity. 

There are other forms, by no means rare, in 
which the patient lives in alternating states of con- 
sciousness. In these cases the second personality is, 
to use M. Binet's words, " seen gradually to develop 
more and more, and to assume the initiative in con- 
duct, instead of the first personality, which is tem- 
porarily annihilated." 

Much more might be said in support of this view ; 
but we have perhaps already given more attention 
to it than is desirable in a discussion of this kind. 
The existence of subordinate beings, holding an in- 
termediate position between the ego and its con- 
stituency of cell-beings, is at best hypothetical ; and 



222 WHAT IS REALITY t 

it may be that the extension of the analogy of the 
ego to the different departments of nerve organiza- 
tion in the body has carried us to a conception that 
is not the counterpart of reality. There are cer- 
tainly many difficulties in the way of getting a clear 
thought of such existences. As the nervous system 
is all connected, and connected in a most intricate 
manner, it is impossible to find in it the verification 
of our hypothesis. And on the other hand, if we 
once begin to indulge the fancy of separate interme- 
diate beings, there seems to be no limit to the multi- 
plication of them. Every separate idea and emotion 
may be personified by the imagination. 

I wish, therefore, in bringing this part of the sub- 
ject to a close, to impress it upon the reader that 
the reality or the non-reality of intermediate beings 
in the human body does not affect our argument. I 
have introduced it, and dwelt upon it, to show that 
there are many reasons for believing that the princi- 
ple of being within being has a vast number of rep- 
etitions on different scales, and that the world is 
perhaps organized on the principle of a hierarchy. 

' We come back, then, to the view with which we 
were previously occupied, namely, that the unity of 
the human ego embraces within its physical organi- 
zation countless myriads of beings that are somehow 
the constituents of its- being and the servants of its 
will. Herein is the great mystery of personality. 
' Call it a double-faced fact, if you will ; but if so, a 
fact both faces of which are veritable aspects of re- 
ality, and to be always treated as realities in our 
constructions of the world of being. Look on this 



UNITY IN MULTIPLICITY. 223 

side, and the multiplicity swallows up the unity. 
Look on that, and the unity seems to annihilate the 
multiplicity. 

We can never grasp the how of this combination. 
A community of beings, howsoever connected, can- 
not be conceived of as merging their multiplicity in 
one being. On the other hand, I know that I, as a 
unity, as an individual, as a person, exist. If I am 
mistaken about this, I am mistaken about every- 
thing. My belief that the constituent cells of my 
body are living beings is only the analogical reflex 
of my knowledge of myself as a living being. Yet 
I cannot locate this personality that I call myself. 
I can find no room for it in the organism. Shall I 
suppose that one cell is somehow specialized and 
differentiated, like the queen-bee in the hive, and 
that by an exceptional course of nutrition and edu- 
cation it becomes the receiver and coordinator of 
sensations from countless subordinate individuals? 
There is no rest for me here ; for the cell is a com- 
posite being. Its ego rests upon a complexity of 
atoms that are as puzzling as the multitude of cells. 
Shall I, then, as a last resort, say : The human soul 
must be an atom, so connected that it combines and 
reacts upon the influences that reach it from count- 
less other atoms ? But, if so, what kind of an atom 
is the soul? Is it a specialized carbon atom? or 
an atom undreamed of by chemistry? This seems 
to be the vanishing point of inquiry on this line. 
In short, the mystery of the unity of being is not 
solved. y 

But, let us remember, this unity is a mystery only 



224 WHAT IS REALITY? 

as related to other facts. In itself, it remains the 
essential fact of the world, — the one thing that we 
are absolutely sure of. But the other fact remains 
also. The ego rests upon, and embraces within 
itself, a multitude of subordinate beings. These 
two realities, then, coexistent but not harmonized 
in our experience, must stand together, and as one 
complex fact express a characteristic of being as it 
is made known to us. 

In the next chapter we shall try to trace some of 
the theological and philosophical bearings of this 
fact. 



CHAPTER IX. 

IMMANENCY AND TRANSCENDENCY. 

Thus far we have considered the hypothesis that 
the human organism is a hierarchy of beings solely 
with reference to scientific requirements. We have 
tried to show that this is a view of things forced 
upon us by honest investigation. Now, I ask the 
reader to see in it a symbol that meets the require- 
ments of a most important desideratum, both in phi- 
losophy and in theology. We have tried, in our 
earlier chapters, to show how utterly without founda- 
tion is the belief that philosophy can dispense with 
symbolism, and attain to a purely intellectual or 
abstract apprehension of God and of the universe. 
We have seen that one system after another has 
failed in the attempt to achieve this, because it has 
been striving for the impossible. 

The difference between the method common to 
these systems and the method which we advocate is 
most clearly brought out by Spinoza when he com- 
pares his own superior knowledge of God with that 
possessed by Moses and the prophets. They, he af- 
firmed, had no true knowledge of the nature and at- 
tributes of God, because God was revealed to them 
simply through figures, and through the pictures of 
the imagination. These shadows of things, he main- 



226 WHAT IS REALITY f 

tained, serve a useful purpose for the instruction of 
undeveloped minds, because the pictures of a lively 
imagination have a far greater effect upon such 
minds than purely reasonable considerations. Eut 
men of intellect are not shut up to this kind of 
knowledge. To them a higher, purer, more definite 
apprehension of God is possible. If they will use 
their God-given reason, they may rise above symbol- 
ism, and know the nature and the attributes of God 
as they really are. , . 

In his 'view *tne imagination is the antithesis of 
reason, — its counter-worker and frustrator. The 
more lively the imagination, the more defective the 
reason. In short, imagination plays just the oppo- 
site part in his method that it does in the philosophy 
that commends itself to us. We hold that reason 
leans upon imagination at every step, that all our or- 
ganized, connected knowledge of things has been 
gained through its use ; that it is the sole construc- 
tive faculty ; and that without its activity, conscious 
or unconscious, we could have nothing but isolated, 
unintelligible sensations. Beason can undo and 
criticise the work of the imagination. It can bring 
together and compare and measure its multitudinous 
constructions, it can select from them those which 
embody most fully and harmoniously the facts of ex- 
perience, and it can make deductions. But it cannot 
turn its back on the godlike, creative faculty. It 
cannot by itself fathom any of the problems of the 
world, let alone the most abstruse and difficult. 
Whenever it seems to do this, it is only sagely tak- 
ing to pieces that which imagination has slowly elab- 
orated from the elements of experience. 



IMMANENCY AND TRANSCENDENCY. 227 

The only true philosophy, therefore, we argued, is 
that which takes its stand on some concrete reality. 
We sought for the highest product of the disci- 
plined imagination, — that is, the largest, most com- 
prehensive reality of experimental synthesis. This 
we found in the human ego, not the abstract ego of 
the idealistic philosophy, but the actual, complex ego 
of experience ; the ego, plus all the relations that 
it sustains to other forms of being. It is legitimate, 
and in perfect accord with the methods of science, 
we further argued, to use this reality, — this most 
comprehensive unit of experience, analogically, for 
the interpretation of the universe. We therefore 
hypothetically assumed that the universe and its 
essential principle, or centre, sustain something the 
same relations to each other that the microcosm, the 
little world of the ego, and its essential principle 
sustain to each other. 

We had to recognize this method as one that had 
long been in use ; and we at once encountered two 
well-worn and approved forms of its application, 
which at first sight seemed fully to preoccupy the 
field. Biit, we argued, the existence of these appli- 
cations of our analogy have not exhausted its capa- 
bilities. Nor is it necessary, if we introduce others, 
to exclude these from our philosophy. They are 
useful, just as the symbols of science are useful, for 
the exploration of certain realms of thought, and 
they are necessary as the exponents of certain rela- 
tions ; but they are not sufficient of themselves to 
meet the requirements of modern thought, either in 
philosophy or in religion. Having brought the 



228 WHAT IS REALITY? 

reader to this point it remains for us to show, first, 
as briefly as possible, in what respects the familiar 
forms of symbolism are deficient as regards philoso- 
phy and religion, and then how these deficiencies are 
met by the view elaborated in the last two chapters. 

Let us observe, to begin with, that the two most 
widely accepted forms of anthropomorphism, though 
they connote very different relations, are alike in 
this, that they concern themselves solely with that 
which is external. Whether we occupy ourselves 
with purely personal relations, or with those that 
exist between a person and a machine, there are al- 
ways two factors conceived of as quite outside and 
independent of each other. In the one case indi- 
viduals confront each other ; and in the other it is 
the inanimate machine that stands over against the 
inventor, constructor, and supervisor. In short, the 
familiar anthropomorphism, standing alone, is antag- 
onistic to the thought of the world as a unity. But 
the goal of all philosophy is unity. The task that it 
assumes is the discovery of a principle, or a concep- 
tion, that shall set the totality of things before the 
mind as an harmoniously related whole. 

Descartes dazzled the philosophic world when, 
from the standpoint of physics, he exclaimed : '"Give 
me extension and motion and I will construct the 
world." Here was suggested a foundation and 
method for a philosophy like that of Spinoza. Des- 
cartes did not himself use it as the basis of a monis- 
tic view of the world, for the very good reason that 
he recognized a real constructing ego outside of that 
which was to be constructed from extension and 



IMMANENCY AND TRANSCENDENCY. 229 

motion. Cogito ergo sum had settled that question 
for him, and his system remained a dualism. 

This dualism Spinoza undertook to reduce to 
unity. He essayed to get the ego inside the world, 
by mixing the mechanical and the spiritual concep- 
tions up together. His system takes its departure 
from a unity of nonentity, — a substance, which is 
one because all differences have been thought out of 
it. From this fount of pure nothing he proceeds to 
deduce the universe with a most imposing array of 
method. By what exercise of reason the unity of 
nothingness has become transformed into the full- 
ness of all things does not appear. It is simply 
assumed that the former is the same as the latter. 
But if we ignore this difficulty, the world that 
Spinoza brings out of his transformed nothingness 
is a bizarre, unreal sort of world. 

It manifests itself in two great streams or catego- 
ries, — thought and extension. These are the two 
sides, or aspects, of the one substance or God. But 
in neither of these categories, or attributes of God, 
do we find the real things of our experience. Mind 
and matter are each distorted and made to appear 
what they are not, in the interests of unity. From 
the divine power of thought proceed the definite 
modes of thought, or ideas ; and from extension the 
modes of extension, or things. Spinoza represents 
these as two coordinate series. There is no relation 
between them of superiority and subordination, de- 
termining and being determined. That which re- 
veals itself to us as thought, or mind, is no more the 
cause of the universe than that which reveals itself 



230 WHAT IS REALITY? 

to us as extension. In such an adjustment it is ne- 
cessarily the higher concept that suffers most. Pur- 
pose, foresight, will, vanish from the world of reali- 
ties. When, therefore, we come to the summing up 
of this most brilliant attempt to present the cosmos 
as a unity, I think we must say that its leading prin- 
ciple is mechanical necessity, and that the wow-reality 
of the ego is its most important deduction. But 
even so, with mind assimilated to mechanism and 
with the multiplicity of the world reduced to an illu- 
sion, there is no unity, save that unity of nonentity 
with which we set out. 

The philosophy of modern realism has many 
points of resemblance to that of Spinoza. In the 
place of his indeterminate substance it postulates 
an unknown and unknowable reality that underlies 
phenomena. The two modes of its manifestation are, 
as in his philosophy, assumed to stand on an equal 
footing. The mental element, or aspect of things, 
gives no more clue to the idea of cause than the 
mechanical. And, also, as in that philosophy, the 
mechanical idea of unintelligent determinism domi- 
nates the system as a whole. But, so far as popular 
acceptance is concerned, modern Realism has one 
great advantage ; namely, the discovery and general 
recognition by science of certain great universal 
principles, or laws, that seem, independently of sym- 
bolism, to demonstrate the unity of the world. That 
this is a mere seeming becomes evident as soon as 
we subject the idea of a law-established unity to 
criticism. 

The unity that seems to be involved in the exist- 



IMMANENCY AND TBANSCENDENCY. 231 

ence of universal principles rests, in fact, upon an 
exceedingly crude symbolism, — a symbolism that 
represents the orderly classifications of phenomena, 
which the human mind has made for itself, as real 
entities, standing by themselves outside of and above 
phenomena. In short, it is a symbolism derived 
from abstractions. For until we assume a being of 
whose nature these laws are the expression, they 
are nothing more than the subjective formulas into 
which the mind of man necessarily casts its percep- 
tions. 

Lotze has given the following weighty expression 
to this thought. " There is nothing," he says, " be- 
sides being and its inherent states ; and a universal 
order, before that of which it is the order has come 
into existence, cannot spring up between beings as a 
self -existent background holding them together. . . . 
We are apt to be led astray in these speculations, by 
a widely diffused usage of thought and speech that 
exercises no prejudicial effect on our judgments of 
the incidents of daily life in reference to which it 
has arisen. We speak of ties uniting things, of rela- 
tions into which they enter, of an order which em- 
braces them, finally, of laws under whose sway they 
respectively stand ; and we hardly notice the con- 
tradiction contained in these notions of relations ly- 
ing ready before the things came to enter into them, 
of an order waiting to receive the things ordered, 
finally, of ties stretched like solid threads — of a ma- 
terial we could not describe — across the abyss that 
divides one being from another. We do not consider 
that all relations and connections exist only in the 



232 WHAT IS REALITY f 

unity of observing consciousness, which, passing from 
one element to another, knits all together by its com- 
prehensive activity, and that in like manner all effi- 
cacious order, all laws, that we are fain to consider 
as existing between things independently of our 
knowledge, can exist only in the unity of the One 
that binds them all together. Not the empty shadow 
of an order of nature, but only the full reality of an 
infinite living being of whom all finite things are in- 
wardly cherished parts, has power so to knit together 
the multiplicity of the universe that reciprocal ac- 
tions shall make their way across the chasm that 
would eternally divide the several distinct elements 
from each other." 1 

It will probably strike the reader that this extract 
suggests pantheism. Unquestionably it does, if only 
one side of the symbol is considered. And it is just 
at this point that the usefulness and truth of our 
analogy is most apparent. Pantheism is the unavoid- 
able goal of all constructive ontological thinking. 
The philosopher is drawn into it as floating material 
is drawn into the vortex of a whirlpool. Yet, as is 
so often the case with processes of abstract thought, 
the thinker awakes from his dream to find himself 
hopelessly at odds with the real world. He is in- 
volved in a conclusion that his experience pronounces 
to be a lie. If the Supreme Being embraces all 
things, does it not follow that the individual is noth- 
ing? Is not his thought of himself as an indepen- 
dent centre of intelligence, deliberation, and will, a 
pure illusion ? Can he, as part of the Supreme Be- 
ing, guide his own action, or be responsible for it ? 

1 Microcosmus, vol. i. p. 380. 



IMMANENCY AND TRANSCENDENCY. 233 

Abstractly considered, he assuredly cannot. But 
if, leaving his abstractions, the thinker adopts, as his 
guide to reality, the analogy with which we assail 
the problem, his pantheism is at once robbed of its 
bane. In the mystery of the human person, he en- 
counters a real combination that abstract thought 
pronounced to be unthinkable. He finds an innu- 
merable multitude of diverse beings so united in their 
intricately woven relations as to form one. Each of 
the subordinate beings is a part of the life of that 
one that unites them all. But each pursues also its 
own life with a large measure of independent action. 

A philosophy that grounds itself upon this reality 
of experience is not simply not in conflict with our 
theology, it is most helpful to it. It supplies it with 
a symbolism of which it stands very much in need. 
Why is it, let us ask ourselves, that one side of our 
thought of God appeals to us as the practical, and 
the other as the mystical, somewhat unreal side? 
The belief that God works in and through man is a 
vital and fundamental part of our theology. All 
our knowledge of God that comes to us through the 
prophets, all that comes through the Incarnation, 
all that comes through conscience, grounds its claim 
upon the truth of this view. The doctrine of the 
spirit that works with our spirits, that inspires, 
guides, and regenerates men, owns the same origin. 
It is a part of our religion upon which we wish to 
take a very strong hold, which ought to be exceed- 
ingly real to us. 

But does it not stand in the thought of most of us 
as a cloudy, unsubstantial, theoretical kind of belief ? 



234 WHAT IS BEALITY? 

Is it not a view of things that impresses us deeply in 
the hours of meditation, but which slips away when 
we come back to the things of earth ? Are we not 
dogged by a sense of inconsistency and paradox in 
view of all our anxious forecastings of the future, 
our carefully laid plans, and the cautious exploration 
of our own way through the world ? And do not 
these strivings sometimes present themselves to us 
as a practical surrender of our higher beliefs? an 
acted expression of distrust in the Power that is 
able and willing to do for us more than we can ask 
or even think ? 

The antidote usually prescribed for such a state 
of mind is increase of faith, or greater spirituality 
in our conceptions ; and with such prescriptions I 
have no fault to find. But it is one thing to point 
out the goal to be attained and another thing to 
show how to attain it. In so far as the difficulty 
under consideration has originated in a defective 
conception of the relations existing between God 
and man, I think we should try to overcome it with 
a truer conception. All we have to offer is a homely 
matter-of-fact analogy. But let us not despise the 
instrument, if it helps us. The doctrine of the 
Spirit, if I am not mistaken, is vague, because it 
has always appealed to us as an abstract, undefined, 
unrestricted principle. The divine efficiency in its 
relations to human efficiency has nowhere been pre- 
sented to us in the terms of a real symbol. 

The Apostle Paul, it is true, made use of a sym- 
bolism very closely resembling ours to illustrate the 
unity and interdependence of the church and its 






IMMANENCY AND TRANSCENDENCY. 235 

members. So, also, Christ made use of the figure 
of the vine and its branches. But it is only recently 
that our attention has been called to the real indi- 
viduality and semi-independence of the subordinate 
units of an organism ; and unless we emphasize this 
the full value of the analogy fails to become ap- 
parent. But with this emphasis the interaction and 
mutual limitation of divine and human efficiency 
finds such a clear and concrete expression as to 
make it impossible for the one to overshadow the 
other in our thought. Magnify as we will the doc- 
trine of the immanency of God, there is no tendency 
to the obscuration of man's personality. For our 
symbol so regulates and restricts the two truths as 
to make them not antithetical but complementary. 
That form of enthusiasm which enjoins passivity on 
the part of man, in order that the Spirit may have 
free course within him, finds no encouragement. 
It is the activity of the subordinate beings that fur- 
nishes the opportunity for the Supreme to work. 
It is when they are the most earnestly engaged, 
each one according to his special endowment, in 
working out their own salvation, that the higher 
power energizes most effectively within them. Nei- 
ther, on the other hand, is it possible for us to lose 
sight of or underestimate the agency of the Spirit 
in our lives. For this, through the medium of our 
symbol, is represented by the overruling, determin- 
ing, constantly modifying action of the ego. 

But, it will be asked, is not the use of this anal- 
ogy, so useful in some respects, embarrassing in 
others ? Does it not tend to the conclusion that the 



236 WHAT IS BEALITYf 

Supreme Being and his subjects are utterly uncon- 
scious of each other ? I think not. 

In the first place it is not true that the human 
ego is wholly unconscious of its subordinate beings. 
It has knowledge of them, both directly and indi- 
rectly. It knows them externally, as if they were 
beings quite foreign to itself ; it knows them inter- 
nally, through direct communication, as part of its 
own being. And, in this twofoldness of its know- 
ledge, we have to recognize a most serviceable phase 
of our analogy. All through the Christian ages the 
thought of God as immanent has lived alongside the 
thought of a God who is transcendent. Both these 
aspects of being are necessary to a comprehensive 
theism. But their development in history has been 
characterized by a vast amount of antagonism. The 
advocate of the immanency of the Deity has felt it 
necessary to emphasize the deficiencies of the tran- 
scendent view, and the upholder of transcendency 
has pronounced the doctrine of an immanent God 
to be no better than pantheism. But in our symbol 
we find immanency and transcendency united in a 
living and abiding reality. 

As immanent, it is true, the ego is not conscious 
of the separate individuality of nerve cells. It can- 
not discriminate lbetween them so as to judge of 
their faithfulness or their unfaithfulness, or so as to 
feel approval or disapproval of the way in which 
they use or abuse their opportunities. It knows 
them directly only in organized groups. It deals 
with them as Jehovah is represented to have dealt, 
in primitive times, with Israel. As transcendent, it 



IMMANENCY AND TRANSCENDENCY. 237 

knows them and ministers to them, for the most 
part, in the same way. Yet it has acquired, in these 
later days, some acquaintance with the being and 
characteristics of individual cells. It is able to dis- 
tinguish diseased cells from normal ones ; it knows 
how to promote the growth of the one class and how 
to discourage the other. All this, to be sure, falls 
very far short of the knowledge that we believe the 
Supreme Being to possess of our souls. But there 
are two considerations that should prevent this de- 
ficiency from being an obstacle to the use of our 
analogy. 

In the first place the knowledge of the human 
ego, both as transcendent and as immanent, is pro- 
gressive. The history of medical science is the rec- 
ord of this progress. And, in the second place, our 
consciousness, though it may afford us a conception 
of the divine consciousness, cannot be regarded as a 
measure of it. I do not mean to intimate that our 
knowledge of nerve cells, because progressive, is ever 
likely to approach in completeness the knowledge 
that we conceive the Supreme Being to have of us. 
But the fact that it is not a fixed quantity, that it is 
a thing of degrees, limited only because we are lim- 
ited, should predispose us to postulate a far more 
perfect knowledge as the attribute of a far higher 
being. As we look the other way, that is, towards 
the animals below us in the biological scale, we can 
see clearly that, beginning with the lowest organ- 
isms, there is a gradual increase of this element of 
consciousness as we ascend the scale. When, there- 
fore, we reason from man to a being higher than 



288 WHAT IS BEAUTY t 

man, we must keep on enlarging our thought of the 
extent and acuteness of this quality ; and if it is the 
Supreme Intelligence of which we are trying to form 
a conception, we are justified in giving the utmost 
freedom to the imagination. Nay, we are obliged 
to say to ourselves, — the knowledge and the in- 
tuitions of such a being must, both in quality and 
extent, far exceed anything that we can imagine. 
They are properly represented to our minds only by 
the word infinite. 

But now how does the case stand with reference 
to the knowledge which we believe ourselves to pos- 
sess of God ? 

Unquestionably, if we were confined to the sym- 
bolism of this particular analogy for our conception 
of being, we should be poorly off. Our knowledge 
of cellular individuals gives us no intimation that 
they are conscious of the ego that dominates the 
organism to which they belong. We have, it is 
true, referred to these subordinate beings as if we 
had some knowledge of their psychical states ; and 
it was perfectly legitimate for us so to do, hypotheti- 
cally. But we have to recognize clearly that we 
draw nothing from them except what we first put 
into them. We invested them with characteristics 
known to us through other relations, — - the relations 
that separate and semi-independent persons sustain 
to each other in the social organism. 

It is clear, therefore, that it is only by combining 
the knowledge which comes to us from two quite 
distinct sources that we can reach a satisfactory 
thought of our relations to the Supreme Being and 






IMMANENCY AND TRANSCENDENCY. 239 

of his relations to us. We have, on the one hand, 
a store of experimental knowledge gathered in our 
capacity as the supreme units of physical organisms, 
and another store of experience, of a different kind, 
gathered in our capacity as the subordinate units of 
the social organism ; and each one of these is fitted 
to throw light on the other. 

We have, then, to face about, as it were, that we 
may supplement the study of man as related to a 
vast aggregate of beings, of which he is the organic 
head, with our experience of his relations to that 
other aggregate of beings that constitutes the na- 
tion. When we do this we find ourselves confronted 
by a similar scene, upon which we are looking from 
a reversed point of view. In the first case we were 
on the mountain, looking down its slope to the ever- 
widening plain, seeing, or thinking we saw, the dim 
uncertain forms of diverse beings working together 
for their own interests, but having the centre and 
reason of their existence in the self-conscious un- 
questionably real observer. In the latter case our 
mountain-top has become a wide-spreading table- 
land, on which the observer finds himself one of a 
multitude of similar beings whose reality is no more 
a matter of doubt to him than his own. The rela- 
tions which the individuals of this multitude sus- 
tain to each other are matters of personal experi- 
ence. They are known as exceedingly varied and 
complex, yet so connected and interdependent as to 
suggest a unity. And when, in the effort to grasp 
this thought of unity-in-complexity, he casts about 
him for a symbol that shall embody it, nothing 



240 WHAT IS BEALITYt 

offers itself save that very aspect of things upon 
which he has just turned his back. 

This multitude of apparently independent units 
closely resembles an organism. But the analogy is 
imperfect ; for, in the latter case, there is wanting 
that well-defined central consciousness that was the 
most certainly real part of the organism of his ex- 
perience. As in the former case, this symbolism is 
luminous on one side and dark on the other. But 
that which was in light before is the one that is in 
shadow now. The dim, uncertain part of the concep- 
tion is the central, dominating entity. This no man 
has seen nor can see. It is a reality that lives in 
men's thoughts, controls their actions, inspires them 
for noble and self-sacrificing deeds. But when we 
try to fix its position it disappears ; or leaves as its 
representative only a specialized individual like the 
king, the prime minister, or the president. This, 
however, does not prevent us from cherishing the 
conception and living in the light of it. 

When the political philosopher tells us that the 
nation is a living organism, that it is a " conscious 
organism," that it is a "moral organism," and a 
" moral personality," 1 it may seem to us that words 
are used in a highly figurative sense. But none 
the less are we convinced by sober reflection that 
this thought, and this alone, makes coherent a class 
of phenomena that more than any other renders the 
study of human history inspiring. So, too, on the 
other hand, when the ethical philosopher tells us 
that the individual man, isolated from the race, is a 

1 The Nation, by Elisha Mulford. 



IMMANENCY AND TRANSCENDENCY. 241 

mere abstraction, that he is but a fragment of social 
tissue, we are certain that this expresses man in view 
of only one set of his manifold relations, but we 
cannot question the truth of the language so far as 
these particular relations are concerned. As a social 
moral being he is one of many, a fractional part of 
a great whole. 

Thus we see that, in all our practical conceptions, 
man occupies a pivotal centre. He is himself the 
reality from which all his knowledge takes its start. 
But he cannot look in all directions at once. Turn- 
ing his face this way, he knows what it is to be the 
intelligent and supreme head of a great and diverse 
multitude of organically connected living agents. 
Turning in the reverse direction, he knows what it is 
to be one of the multitude, and how it is possible for 
individuals to be fractional parts of a great unity 
without losing their individuality. The most evident 
deduction from this is that the one set of relations 
may be employed to elucidate the possible relations 
of the Supreme Being to his creatures, and that the 
other may be expected to throw light upon their 
relations to Him. But, if I am not mistaken, much 
more than this is contained in these two depart- 
ments of experience. They touch each other at too 
many points to admit of such a hard line of sepa- 
ration. There is a continuity in them ; and each 
throws light on the dark spaces of the other. It is, 
in fact, by an unconscious reciprocity of this kind 
that we have attained to even the most vague con- 
ceptions in either department. The social organism 
has been the analogical expression of the physical, 
and the physical of the social. 



242 WHAT IS REALITY f 

Let us pass in review some of the relations ex- 
isting between the human ego and its subordinate 
beings, and see whether, as interpreted by this al- 
lied symbolism, they are capable of throwing light 
upon our relations to God. 

We may take it for granted that the primary 
interest of a nerve-cell centres in itself; that self- 
preservation and the gratification of natural wants 
command the lion's share of its attention. , Its dis- 
tinct consciousness of other beings, we will say, ex- 
tends only to those of its own kind, or of nearly 
related kinds. Its interests are cell interests, or at 
most we can hardly suppose them to rise higher 
than ganglionic interests. At the same time, know- 
ing what we do of the efficiency of the central ego, 
we can hardly doubt that its determinations are 
represented in some way, however vaguely, in the 
consciousness of cells directly affected by them. 
When the attention of the ego concentrates itself 
upon a particular interest, the vitality and strength 
of the organism is directed to a special part of the 
brain, or nervous system ; and in that part there is 
superabundant life, activity, and growth. Some- 
how, we know not how, when this concentrated at- 
tention is accompanied by constructive effort on the 
part of the ego, its activity results in a more or less 
elaborate organization of nerve cells corresponding 
to the form of thought in the ego. 

In what guise this organizing activity appears to 
the agents of it we shall never know. But we may 
reasonably conjecture that, had they the power of re- 
flection, it would seem to them much as it now seems 



IMMANENCY AND TRANSCENDENCY. 243 

to us when our plans and strivings appear to be 
tributary to larger and nobler ends than those which 
we have set before us. We may believe that they 
would have a vague but profound conviction of a 
destiny more important than that of the individual ; 
and that in the moments of their highest activity 
they might conceive themselves to be inspired. 

We might further illustrate this thought by re- 
ferring to the well-known power of the ego over 
the organism for the preservation of health, and for 
the overcoming of disease. When all goes well we 
say that the organs of the body are doing their 
work normally and thoroughly ; and we little think 
how much of this desirable state of things is to be 
credited to the confident, cheerful attitude of the 
central consciousness. When disease comes, each 
organ and cell has its own way of contending 
against it ; and if when hard pressed in the conflict 
there comes a great inflow of strength, it is perhaps 
that the ego has heard good news, has found a new 
interest in life, or has thrown the whole force of a 
hitherto unused will-power into the battle. 

In all these cases we have illustrated to us the 
greatest mystery of being, — the mystery of life 
within life, of mind cooperating with mind, not ex- 
ternally, but internally and immediately. We do 
not understand any better than before how such in- 
teraction is accomplished, nor how it is possible that 
man, while leading a life of his own, should at the 
same time be the unconscious agent of a higher Being 
of whom he is a part. But it brings the fact, the re- 
ality of a similar relationship, on a different scale, 



244 WHAT IS REALITY ? 

within the range of our ordinary experience. In one 
sense it remains a mystery ; but, in the same sense, 
all the processes of nature are mysterious. It no 
longer has that most trying kind of mj^stery that in- 
clines to doubt, — the kind that must always cling 
to a fact that stands alone, that can in the wide uni- 
verse find no other fact to which it can be likened. 

There is another class of relations, not so direct, 
but very intimate, that is capable of being turned to 
account in our theology. The ego is & providence, 
both general and special, to its little world of sub- 
jects. It might seem, indeed, almost as true to say 
that they are a providence to it. For it owes its 
existence and development to their increase and 
organization ; and its present state of existence 
would cease except for their constant activity in the 
performance of functions that only they know how 
to perform. But from the time that the ego begins 
to be conscious of itself, as an individual with wants 
to be satisfied and interests to protect, there begins 
also an activity of the one for the welfare of the 
many. The first cry of the infant for attention is a 
demand of the one in response to the inwardly man- 
ifested clamors of the multitude that have suddenly 
become dependent upon it. And from this time 
on, the destiny of the diverse beings that make up 
the cosmos of the human organism becomes more 
and more dependent upon the intelligence, the en- 
ergy, and the morality of the ego. 

When the ego suffers hunger or thirst, what is it 
but that its myriad subjects are urging it with in- 
articulate prayers to consider and minister to their 



IMMANENCY AND TRANSCENDENCY. 245 

wants? Unless the ego bestirs itself they must 
starve. They, indeed, are able and willing to work 
for their living ; but only when they are directed 
and led by the ego can they work to any purpose. 
It must be the divinity that shapes their ends, that 
combines and directs their skill and their energies 
in such a way that they shall accomplish the thing 
that is required. And when the constantly recur- 
ring wants of the multitude are regularly met by a 
bountiful supply of meat and drink, it must seem to 
their consciousnesses somewhat as the early and the 
latter rain and the timely sunshine seem to ours. 

Again, in view of hostile influences the lives and 
the welfare of this great throng of beings are largely 
conditioned upon the wisdom of their sovereign ego. 
They depend implicitly upon its sagacity, its vigil- 
ance, its courage, and its prudence to carry them 
safely through the innumerable dangers that beset 
their existence, — dangers which they can neither 
foresee nor guard against. They assist according to 
their several endowments. One great division is 
organized as a corps of observation, another has 
been detailed and specially trained to gather infor- 
mation by the use of articulate speech, and this 
other constitutes the auditory system ; but their ac- 
tivities are of no avail unless the ego, or one of its 
trained representatives in a subordinate nerve centre, 
elaborates the information received, and gives effect 
to it through other sets of carefully educated, execu- 
tive workers. 

The higher we rise in the scale of being, the more 
prominently does the non-mechanical aspect of this 



246 WHAT IS BEALITFt 

relationship appear, the more clearly is the function 
of the ego seen to be that of a far-seeing and 
overruling wisdom. In the lower organisms the 
quickness and the uniformity of the responses to ex- 
ternal influences may suggest mechanism ; but the 
more the ego becomes developed, the more critically 
does it consider the reports and petitions that are 
sent up by its subjects, and the more competent does 
it become to correct, to refuse, to modify, to recon- 
struct, and even to revolutionize. It becomes too 
wise to satisfy every appetite that importunes ac- 
cording to the measure of its demands. The word 
discipline calls up to the memory of every moral 
man numberless occasions on which he has played 
the part of an inflexible ruler and governor. He has 
found himself hardly beset by the opposing claims 
of diverse interests in his little world ; and he has 
found his wisdom sorely puzzled to adjust these, to 
give a reasonable satisfaction in many directions so 
that there shall be no cause for desolating rebellions 
among his subjects. 

All this is familiar enough to our experience and 
to our reflection. We have, perhaps, dwelt too long 
upon it already. But before passing on to other 
thoughts I would call attention to the use that may 
be made of our analogy in illustrating another side 
of the matter ; that is, the worth of the subordinate 
individual. 

Cells, it is true, are continually perishing, and 
their places are taken by others. They succeed each 
other as the generations of men succeed each other 
in the social organism. But while it lives, every 



IMMANENCY AND TRANSCENDENCY. 247 

living cell has functions to perform, the significance 
of which cannot be isolated from the significance of 
the whole. The faithful performance of its part con- 
tributes something to the vitality of the other mem- 
bers of the organism, and, at the same time, to the 
happiness and efficiency of the ego. In this dual 
relationship we have a unique symbol for illustrat- 
ing the significance of the dual statement of the 
moral law. The organic unity of the symbol brings 
very clearly before us the unity that underlies the 
two statements: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy 
God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thy- 
self." Duty to one's neighbor is not something 
separate from and superadded to duty to one's God. 
It is, in the organic unity of the world, only a dif- 
ferent aspect of the same duty. Devotion to the 
Supreme Being can realize itself in only one way, — 
faithfulness to organic relations. The immediate 
concern of each individual element, or being, is the 
discharge of its special functions as related to other 
subordinate beings. But this is made sublime and 
inspiring for man by the knowledge of his connec- 
tion with the Supreme Ego. 

But it may still seem to the reader that there is 
something forced and artificial in striving to com- 
bine, in our thought of the Supreme Being and his 
human subjects, ideas acquired in departments of 
experience so separate as those of the physical or- 
ganism and the body politic. It may therefore be 
worth while to add to what has been said of the 
similarity and continuity of these departments the 
consideration that they are in all respects homoge- 



248 WHAT IS REALITYf 

neous. They differ not in kind but only in degree. 
Every important characteristic of the one is repre- 
sented to some extent in the other. In the social 
organism, as well as in the physical, the relations 
which we study are relations between organized 
groups of nerve cells. The characteristic that spe- 
cially distinguishes the relations of the social organ- 
ism is that of externality. When one individual has 
relations with another he seems to be dealing with 
that which is no part of himself, but a separate en- 
tity, — a separate focus of interests. A natural 
chasm has to be artificially bridged by some means 
of communication. Contrasted with this, action 
within the physical organism seems to be direct, in- 
stantaneous, and accomplished without the interven- 
tion of means. 

But if we penetrate beneath this outside appear- 
ance of things, we shall see that, in both cases, there 
is another phase of the reality than that which has 
preoccupied the imagination ; and that when this 
is taken into account, the two sets of relations de- 
clare themselves to be not essentially different, but 
different only in the degree of prominence developed 
in certain elements. We shall be convinced that 
our thought of ourselves as contained within the 
little world of a physical organism is a false sugges- 
tion of the imagination. Our existence extends as 
far as our communications extend. The head of the 
body politic, the ideal king or statesman, whose 
sight extends to every quarter of an extended realm, 
and whose comprehensive intelligence understands 
all the varied interests that balance each other 



IMMANENCY AND TRANSCENDENCY. 249 

within it, is a vast being compared with the day- 
laborer who has no thought above the routine of his 
occupation, though he may, perchance, have a larger 
body and a heavier brain. 

The difference consists in this, that the statesman 
has brought into vital connection with his own brain 
the brains of a multitude of diverse individuals. If 
we allow our thought to be captured at this point by 
a contemplation of the means by which all this is 
brought about, we shall assuredly rest in that which 
is secondary and incidental, and lose sight of the es- 
sential fact. The man of. high position in the state 
has, it is true, extended the field of his consciousness 
and power by means of such things as articulate 
sounds, printed books, letters hurried by steam 
from one end of the realm to another, and by the 
use of electric wires stretched to every town and 
hamlet like the nerve fibres of the body. But we 
must look underneath all this machinery to find the 
essential condition of its effectiveness ; namely, the 
fact that the brain masses belonging to all the indi- 
viduals of the nation are homogeneous, and capable 
of being linked together so as to pour all their 
knowledge into the combining consciousness of any 
individual whose capacity is equal to its reception. 
From this point of view, therefore, the externality 
of the relations between individuals has to give 
place to another phase of the truth, that is equally 
real, and more vital. 

On the other hand, when we examine the phe- 
nomena that characterize the interaction of the ele- 
ments within the physical organism, the impression 



250 WHAT IS BEALITY? 

of immediateness and absence of means vanishes. 
There is no internal communication that does not 
require time for its transmission ; and all the in- 
tercourse that takes place between individual ele- 
ments within the organism is as dependent upon 
means as that which takes place outside of it. 
Much attention has been successfully given, of late 
years, to the accurate measurement of the intervals 
that elapse between the reception of stimuli by dif- 
ferent exterior organs and their perception at head- 
quarters. In short, scientific research tends contin- 
ually to the abolition of those special marks by 
which we have discriminated between the inter- 
course of beings within and without the organism. 

None the less, however, when we have ceased 
from our analysis, do the two relationships continue 
to represent different aspects of the connection of 
souls with each other. The one emphasizes the 
thought of separateness, — of units instrumentally 
connected. The other makes prominent the aspect 
of internal unity and apparent immediateness of 
communication. Limited as we are, we shall do 
well to make the most of our privilege of looking 
now upon one side and now upon the other of this 
dual reality. 

When we think of God as our sovereign and as 
the ruler and director of the universe, that depart- 
ment of our experience that emphasizes the separate- 
ness and externality of the relations of beings to 
each other will provide the terms for the framing of 
our conception. We may picture to ourselves this 
vast universe as a network of means for conveying 



IMMANENCY AND TRANSCENDENCY. 251 

the knowledge of itself to the Being who dwells 
apart, separate in his individuality, yet so connected 
with each one of his creatures that nothing passes 
unnoticed or fails to share his attention. On the 
other hand, when we think of our relations to the 
great sum of things so connected in every part as 
to form an organic unity, and of the one life and 
order that flows through all things, we have to put 
the thought of separateness far into the background, 
and concentrate our attention upon the one organic 
Being. 

Each of these views in its own place is best. No 
greater mistake can be made than to array them 
against each other. God is immanent in the world, 
the very life and breath of all things. He is the 
great heart and brain of the universe. He is the 
ego, for whom and by whom all things exist. Every 
plant and flower and every animated form is an ex- 
pression of some thought of his. Every event that 
takes place in the world is an incident in his life. 
But, on the other hand, God is also transcendent. 
He is the Supreme Being of a vast hierarchy of be- 
ings. He is distinct from all the others, and above 
them all. They are his ministers that do his plea- 
sure. He is their Sovereign, they are his subjects. 
He is their Father, they are his children. He is 
their Creator, they are his instruments. He directs 
and overrules their activities for the attainment of 
ends that dwell in his thought as ideals. 

Will any one still say that these two views are 
contradictory, that we have thrown reason to the 
winds in the attempt to combine opposites? We 



252 WHAT IS BEALITY? 

have no argument to prove that they are not contra- 
dictory. We only point to our symbol. These op- 
posites, if opposites they are, are combined in experi- 
ence. We have found a firm basis of analogy on 
which to rest our most comprehensive theology. If 
I am entitled to think of myself as a real person, as 
a unity, and at the same time as a unity conditioned 
upon, and embracing within myself, a multitude of 
other living units, I am also entitled to think of 
the Supreme Being of the universe as, at the same 
time, immanent and transcendent. I am a pantheist 
without ceasing to be a theist. As a pantheist I 
cannot help being keenly alive to the deficiencies 
of transcendent theism. But as a theist I am 
equally clear as to the untruth of abstract panthe- 
ism. And if I confine myself to these negative as- 
pects of the two views, I become, by necessity, an 
agnostic. But reason does not indorse such a pro- 
cedure in relation to one class of my beliefs, unless 
I extend it to every class ; and I am not prepared 
to relinquish all my positive views of things. The 
common-sense ground of life, the basis of all success- 
ful action, commends itself to me as better than 
this universal nescience. I resolve, therefore, to 
put my trust in those positive convictions that ex- 
perience furnishes, believing that they are aspects 
of the truth as related to me and to my present 
requirements. 

This brings us to the close of one long stage in 
our argument. We have developed the principles 
that are to be our guide in the determination of 



IMMANENCY AND TRANSCENDENCY. 253 

reality. In the application of these principles, we 
have found good reason for believing, first, that 
mind is the essential reality of the world; and, 
second, that a Supreme Being sustains somewhat 
the same relations to the universe that the human 
ego sustains to the little world of its manifold activi- 
ties. That is, we have found ourselves justified in 
assuming this to be the true hypothesis, so far as 
our examination of phenomena has extended. It 
now remains to be seen whether this hypothesis is 
sustained when a wider application of it is made. 

Up to this point we have not interrogated our 
symbol as to its bearings upon the problem of cre- 
ation. The idea of creation unquestionably owes 
its origin to a different symbolism. It has sprung 
from our notion of the relations which man sustains 
to objects external to himself which his intelligence 
has called into being. And at first sight, the im- 
plications of our analogy as well as the history of 
the world seem to be the flat contradiction of the as- 
sumption that the Supreme Being is also the Creator 
of the universe which He dominates. In the evolu- 
tion of the individual the ego appears as the result, 
the latest product of the myriad subordinate beings 
that constitute its kingdom ; and in the world-pro- 
cess the appearance is the same. Intelligence and 
creative skill are seen to be not the pre existent 
cause, but the goal attained. In the next chapter I 
shall try to show that this appearance is not de- 
structive of our hypothesis. 



CHAPTER X. 

EVOLUTION. 

On the very threshold of an inquiry as to the 
agreement of theism and evolution we are arrested 
by a consideration that may be stated somewhat as 
follows : If the world is the result of a continual 
creation, slowly advancing from the simple to the 
complex, is it not the height of absurdity to employ 
the latest and most complex product, the human 
mind, as the symbol of the preexisting cause of the 
whole process? It seems to me that there is no 
escape from an affirmative answer to this question, 
if the simple elements, to which the process is traced, 
are to be regarded as its absolute beginnings. But 
the habit of mind that causes the doctrine of evolu- 
tion to assume the form of an exhaustive history of 
the world is quite foreign to any scientific statement 
of that doctrine. 

What is there in evolution that suggests a begin- 
ning? True, its starting-point may be figured to 
the imagination as a next-to-nothing. It appears, at 
the end of our backward tracing of the process, as 
the vanishing-point of existence. But a little re- 
flection tells us that this aspect of the germinal unit, 
or units, of evolution is a purely external one. The 
smallness of the germ and the inadequacy of our 



EVOLUTION. 255 

powers of discernment make it appear insignificant ; 
but the results that flow from it proclaim it to be 
the compendium of a history yet to be developed. 
It includes within itself a world of possibilities ; 
and if we go to nature to ask the origin of this po- 
tential complexity, we are referred to an antecedent 
history, the manifoldness of which has in some way 
been compressed into this apparently simple germi- 
nal form. 

The real evolution, the evolution of experience, 
that from which our hypothesis of the world process 
takes its rise, is found in the egg. The history of 
the egg conducts us back to the single cell. Do we 
in this find any suggestion of an absolute begin- 
ning ? Not at all. It represents the beginning of 
a new cycle of animal life ; but all the wonderful 
development that is possible to this speck of proto- 
plasm dates back for its cause not simply to the 
cycle of development that has preceded it, but to 
innumerable cycles, which, taken collectively, form 
a more comprehensive race cycle. 

In all this there is no indication of an absolute 
beginning ; but on the contrary from the general 
law of continuity, that what is true of one case will 
be true of similar cases, and probably true of what 
are probably similar, we are constrained to the be- 
lief that there is no such absolute beginning; and 
that the external appearance of the beginnings of 
any cycle affords not the slightest clew as to the 
nature of its antecedents. Jevons 1 has called atten- 
tion to the fact that physical science gives no coun- 

1 The Principles of Science, chap. xxxi. 



256 WHAT IS REALITY? 

tenance to the notion of infinite duration of matter 
in one continuous course of existence. The theory 
of heat obliges us to conceive of a limit to the pres- 
ent order of things. It places us in the dilemma 
either of believing in a creation de novo at an as- 
signable date in the past, or else of supposing that 
some inexplicable change in the working of natural 
laws then took place. No matter which horn of this 
dilemma we take, we are held to the conclusion that 
the simple elements of the most comprehensive cycle 
known to us do not represent the beginning. There 
was either an antecedent state of things, or a pre- 
existing creator. 

What, then, shall we say of that tendency of the 
human mind to believe that the simplest forms of 
things give us a clew to their beginnings ? I think 
we must say that is only the result of a one-sided 
way of looking at them; and that, when all the 
facts are taken into consideration, reason demands 
the existence of a complex antecedent to account for 
the innumerable potentialities of relatively simple 
elements as much as it demands antecedent simple 
elements to account for that which is complex. In 
other words, we may affirm that the attempt to dis- 
cover origins by the study of external phenomena is 
doomed to everlasting frustration. 1 

1 "We drive the problem backwards, step by step, and at last 
have to make the confession that the primal origin remains to us a 
mystery, and that throughout the course of the universe we discern, 
at most, alternations of development, but nowhere the origin of that 
primary arrangement on which the possibility of this rotation abso- 
lutely depends. . . . Every orderly combination is based upon a 
prior combination, and varied as is this melody of the becoming, 



EVOLUTION. 257 

But now let us observe that, though we are 
obliged to relegate the problem of beginnings to the 
category of no-thoroughfare questions, it is quite 
otherwise with the problem of cause. If we will 
shut out from our minds the impossible idea of a 
cause antecedent to all existence, it is possible for 
us to conduct rationally, and with a fair prospect of 
success, an inquiry as to the cause or causes of forms 
and qualities. We can do this, because we are, in 
our own experience, acquainted with a real causative 
power, — a power that plans and originates modifi- 
cations at innumerable points in the ever-flowing 
course of physical changes. It is just because we 
know such a power incessantly at work in the guid- 
ance of human activities that we instinctively pos- 
tulate the existence of a similar power at work in 
the phenomena of nature, when they express order 
and adaptation to ends. And, in what follows, I 
shall try to show that this instinct is not, even from a 
scientific point of view, misleading ; but, on the con- 
trary, that it indicates to us the only possible way by 
which we can reach a rational construction of that 
broadest of all generalizations, known as evolution. 

Two quite different conceptions have been made 
use of by those who have believed it possible to ex- 
plain the world process as ?iott-intelligent. On the 

now swelling 1 into gTeater fullness, now sinking into an insignificant 
germinal form, it has for us neither beginning nor ending, and all 
our science can do is to climb up and down this interminable stem, 
comprehending the connection of particular portions as the result 
of universal laws, but never attaining to the discernment of the 
originating principle of the whole, or of the goal of its develop- 
ment." — Microcosmus, vol. i. p. 372. 



258 WHAT IS REALITY? 

one hand, the unconscious formative power is thought 
of as working from within, — as bringing about the 
wonders of organic adaptation determinately, in 
virtue of chemical and physical laws. And, on the 
other, the predominant shaping influence has been 
traced to the pressure of external circumstances 
upon an infinite variety of indeterminate forms sup- 
plied by the activity of organic elements and by 
sexual differences. These two conceptions are in a 
measure rivals ; but they are not mutually exclusive. 

Both of them, as we have intimated, are exclusive 
of the idea of a supreme constantly working creative 
intelligence. But it must be said of the former that 
it did not, at first, make its appearance as the abso- 
lute antithesis of a mind-caused universe. While it 
diverted attention from the thought of a single crea- 
tive being, it recognized the half-intelligent efforts 
of creatures as an important determining element. 
The relation in which the new thought stood to the 
accepted idea of creation found the following ex- 
pression in a book published by the philosophical 
club of Derby, of which Dr. Erasmus Darwin was 
the leading spirit : " What we call creatures were 
not created by God, for there is no such being as we 
imagine by that name, but by themselves, that is, by 
the process of evolution." 2 This was manifestly a 
reflection of Lamarck's idea that living creatures 
have, to some extent, the power of so responding to 
changed external conditions as to favorably modify 
their organizations as regards those conditions. 

This hypothesis was based upon the following fact 

1 Moseley's Reminiscences. 



EVOLUTION, 259 

of experience : " In every animal which has not 
passed the term of its development, the frequent 
and sustained employment of an organ, gradually 
strengthening, develops and enlarges it," There- 
fore, it was argued, as different external circum- 
stances call out different activities for the preserva- 
tion of life, the result is necessarily the development 
of different organs. That class of organs which, 
from being most used, are most nourished, tend to 
grow stronger, larger, and more elaborate; while 
those which are not called into activity are weak- 
ened and deteriorated, and finally become rudimen- 
tary or disappear altogether. 

This rendering of evolution, while it did not attrib- 
ute to the creature a consciously inventive and con- 
structive intelligence, did suggest a certain amount 
of intelligence, — - an amount that is sufficient to 
give direction to effort ; and further, in view of the 
fact that this direction of effort has resulted in the 
formation of organs most elaborately adapted to 
the successive requirements of environment, there is 
a manifest implication of inventive intelligence re- 
siding somewhere in the creature. This implication 
has been recognized and followed out in a variety 
of ways. Murphy, Cope, and von Hartmann have 
each constructed an interesting hypothesis to ac- 
count for this appearance of unconscious inventive in- 
telligence. But our examination of these must be 
deferred. We must first consider those explana- 
tions that regard the formative influences as purely 
Ticm-intelligent. 

From the time of Lamarck the idea of evolution 



260 WHAT IS REALITY ? 

made, for fifty years, but little progress ; and when 
at the end of this chrysalis period it awoke to new 
life, it showed itself in a very different aspect. Dar- 
win did not, it is true, ignore the work of Lamarck, 
or deny to it an element of truth. But he introduced 
a new principle which was completely to overshadow 
it. Dr. Asa Gray, in his interpretation of Darwin's 
position, affirms that he held both terms of the fol- 
lowing antithesis, — " that variations are in some 
way excited by change of external conditions ; also 
that they are determined by something within rather 
than something without the organism." But Dr. 
Gray also admits that Darwin is correctly repre- 
sented as believing that the variations are perhaps 
fortuitous so far as their usefulness to the organism 
goes. 

The fact is, Darwin was not primarily interested 
in what may be called the internal factors of evolu- 
tion. His whole attention and ingenuity went out 
to the elucidation of the influence of environment 
upon the persistence of organisms. The tendency 
to vary he treated, for the most part, as physicists 
treat the law of gravitation. It constituted for him 
a never-ceasing but purposeless formative energy, 
by means of which life is enabled to penetrate every 
crack and cranny of the universe that gives it room 
and sustenance. What exists is only an infinitesi- 
mal part of that which begins to exist. New forms 
or modifications of forms are destroyed, by mil- 
lions, in their clash with environment ; and only 
those remain that chance to fall upon the open or 
relatively soft places of the world. The result is 



EVOLUTION. 261 

somewhat like that presented by a much indented 
coast line. Life, with its infinite capacity for varia- 
tion and adaptation, like the irrepressible water, has 
occupied the open spaces, and continues to wear for 
itself channels in every yielding portion of the en- 
vironment. And as a bird's-eye view of such a coast 
line presents every variety of shape in the spaces 
occupied by water, so life has been coerced by its 
environment, animate and inanimate, into the varied 
forms that we see around us. 

The method by which Darwin arrived at this con- 
ception was, in its main features, a legitimate one. 
Like a true philosopher, he looked about the world 
for some concrete fact that might be used analogi- 
cally as a key to unlock the secret of Nature's trans- 
formations. Some little part of the process must 
be found where she should be caught, as it were, 
in the act of producing one species or variety from 
another. This he conceived himself to have dis- 
covered in the gradual transformations of form and 
habit which the care of man has produced in domes- 
ticated animals and plants. Actual changes, whose 
whole history was accurately known, could here be 
studied in all their stages. 

The chief cause of these changes in Darwin's 
view was the selection exercised by man. By his 
intelligence man discovers that certain individuals of 
the same species possess distinguishing character- 
istics. Some of these characteristics render the 
animals possessing them more valuable to him than 
others. It is for his interest, therefore, to make 
the whole domesticated species resemble the few 



262 WHAT IS REALITY? 

valuable individuals. This lie accomplishes by per- 
mitting these, and these alone, to produce their 
kind. In every generation the less favored progeny 
is withdrawn from the line of increase and develop- 
ment. Applying this to nature, he offered to sci- 
ence the phrase Natural Selection, as the expres- 
sion of a principle that should be regarded as the 
chief cause of the existence of all established spe- 
cies. As man restricts reproduction to a specific 
channel by the suppression of the mass, so also does 
nature. Only, instead of man, intelligently dis- 
criminating between more' or less desirable indi- 
dividuals, we have, in nature, conflict with environ- 
ment, — a conflict that results in withdrawing from 
the line of increase and development those individ- 
uals and types that cannot hold their own in the 
struggle for existence. 

Now, for a true estimate of the satisfactoriness of 
this account of forms and adaptations, it is very ne- 
cessary that we understand fully the meaning of the 
words used in its statement. Let us see clearly, 
from the start, that the action of natural selection 
is altogether unintelligent. Unless we bear this 
constantly in mind the word selection will call up 
false ideas. Darwin's reason for choosing this word 
was his desire to signalize the connection between 
his principle and the fact of experience upon which 
it is analogically based. But the choice seems to 
me to have been an unfortunate one, because the 
selective act of man is the very element in the 
analogy of which no use is made. Selection always 
implies thought. It is a synonym for choice be- 



EVOLUTION. 263 

tween things or courses of action that have been 
intelligently compared. No word in the language 
is more fully invested with psychic meaning ; and 
no word, therefore, is less fitted to stand where it 
stands. It is impossible for any one to reach a true 
estimate of Darwin's principle till he has schooled 
himself to think into the word selection, as often as 
it appears, a meaning exactly the reverse of that 
which it ordinarily represents. 

To simplify matters, then, I would suggest that 
the true name of this principle is natural repression. 
Or, better than this, since nature has been so much 
personified in our thoughts, let us say unintelligent 
repression. This, while it keeps constantly before 
us the two distinctive ideas of the principle, clearly 
marks it off: from the conception of a continually 
operating purposive intelligence. As often as we 
use it we are reminded of the fact that the principle 
for which it stands is offered to explain the world 
only in so far as it can be explained by a process of 
undesigned limitation or exclusion. 

Having settled this, let us ask, first, does the non- 
inclusion of the element of intelligent selection viti- 
ate the analogy for the purposes of Mr. Darwin's 
hypothesis ? I cannot see that it does. The re- 
sult is attained, in both cases, by precisely the same 
means, that is, the withdrawal of the mass of indi- 
viduals from the line of increase and development. 
How that withdrawal is brought about is irrelevant 
to the hypothesis. It seems to me, therefore, that 
the reasoning at this point is sound. There is a 
process going on in nature similar to that by which 



264 WHAT IS REALITY? 

man protects and improves certain varieties of ani- 
mals and plants. In the latter case, the preserved 
are those that fit the wants of man ; in the former, 
they are those that fit environment. 

We are ready, then, for the next question, which 
must be, To what extent does this principle explain 
the forms and adaptations that we find in nature ? 
Does it, as in the case of the domestication of ani- 
mals, effect only the accumulation and preservation 
of certain developed characteristics ? Or may it be 
credited with the origination of all the elaborate ad- 
justments of organized life ? It might be claimed 
that the principle of continuity justifies us in mak- 
ing the latter assumption. If there is at work in 
nature a principle that makes for the survival of 
the fittest, why should not the repression of all those 
variations that are useless to the species have pro- 
duced just such adaptive combinations as those we 
see about us in living organisms ? 

Our answer is that no continuity of the principle 
of repression can begin to account for the exist- 
ence of the forms repressed. In the production of 
new varieties of domesticated animals, man finds 
ready-made, for his selective act to work upon, a 
world of elaborately organized and delicately ad- 
justed forms. Now if we assume the existence of a 
positive constructive principle in nature, — a prin- 
ciple that makes for a continually increasing com- 
plexity in organization, then we shall have something 
like a true analogy on which to base our explana- 
tion. 

But this is just what the advocates of the su- 



EVOLUTION. 265 

premacy of natural selection deny us. For, if there 
be such a constructive principle at work, then the 
principle of selection or repression must be assigned 
to an exceedingly subordinate place. A power that 
makes for a continually increasing complexity of 
organization must, of necessity, give rise to very 
definite forms. Every organization is a balance of 
forces that are delicately adjusted to each other. 
If such a power exists, the power that modifies these 
definite forms by the repression of a part of them 
sinks into relative insignificance. We may still be 
greatly interested in it as a principle that intensifies 
the separateness of forms ; but we can never think 
of it as the form producer. We cannot see things as 
Wallace see them, when he says : " Whatever other 
causes have been at work, Natural Selection is 
supreme, to an extent which even Darwin himself 
hesitated to claim for it. The more we study it, 
the more we are convinced of its overpowering im- 
portance, and the more confidently we claim, in Dar- 
win's own words, that it has been the most impor- 
tant, but not the exclusive, means of modification." 1 
How is it, then, it may be asked, that a philoso- 
pher like Wallace, who has spent a lifetime in the 
study of the facts from which the hypothesis of evo- 
lution is deduced, can see them in this light? I 
conceive that it is to be explained by the aptitude 
which men of special gifts often display of seeing 
things in special ways. It seems to me that all 
those who claim so much for the principle of re- 
pression have permitted the principle of variation 

1 Darwinism, p. 444. 



266 WHAT IS BEALITY? 

to completely hide from view tlie principle of posi- 
tive construction. They seem to take it for granted 
that when they have demonstrated that unlimited 
variation is a universal fact, they have summed up 
all, or nearly all, that is not due to repression. But 
simple variation carries with it no principle of prog- 
ress. It does not, of itself, lead to new and higher 
combinations. All that we mean by the word or- 
ganization is quite outside of and beyond the sphere 
of mere variability. And the great stress that has 
been laid upon the fact of variation has diverted 
attention from the constructive force that varies, 
much to the prejudice of accurate thinking. 

This appears very clearly, if I mistake not, in 
Weismann's account of the causes of variation, — an 
account which lays a heavier weight than any other 
upon the much-burdened shoulders of natural selec- 
tion. Let us look for a moment at his rendering 
of the matter. Weismann traces all variations in 
the beginning to contact with environment. 1 So 
long as the animated world was composed of unicel- 
lular organisms, there was no bar to the origina- 
tion of race peculiarities by the transmission of 
those individual characteristics that were acquired 
through response to environment. An amoeba, 
when nutrition and growth have reached a certain 
stage, reproduces itself by making a fair and equal 
division of all its elements to identically constructed 
halves of itself ; and then, after existing for a brief 
period as a double organism, it separates and be- 
comes two. Neither one of these two is the original 
1 Essays upon Heredity, Oxford, 1889, p. 278. 



EVOLUTION. 267 

amoeba more than the other. Each is the progeni- 
tor in a somewhat depleted condition. Every vari- 
ation, therefore, that has been produced through 
contact with environment is transmitted. 

But this method of originating persistent varia- 
tions is, Weismann maintains, one that no longer 
operates after race evolution has passed the unicel- 
lular stage. For when organisms become multicel- 
lular there ensues a differentiation of cells and a 
division of labor. Only one particular class of cells, 
that which contains the germ-plasm, has to do with 
reproduction. These germ cells form a caste so ab- 
solutely separated from all the others as to remain, 
so far as their constitution is concerned, practically 
unchanged by any influence proceeding from the 
external world. 

It would seem as if evolution must, at this point, 
come to a standstill. But no ; a new method of va- 
riation appears in the field. Amphigonic, or sexual, 
reproduction introduces a new series of differences 
springing from the union of those diverse elements 
that have been originated and accumulated in uni- 
cellular organisms by contact with environment. 1 
There can be, it is said, no end to such variations, 
because no two individuals are just alike. And al- 
though the door is shut against the entrance of new 
variations from the outside, the various character- 
istics that were acquired in the unicellular stage 
present themselves in new combinations, every time 
a new individual comes into the world. Even the 
individuals that proceed from a single pair are not 
} Essays upon Heredity, p. 272. 



268 WHAT IS REALITY f 

alike. For the germ-plasm of each progenitor has 
within it the power of reproducing not simply the 
characteristics of immediate ancestors, but those also 
of countless generations that have preceded them. 
Some of the progeny, therefore, may inherit the pe- 
culiarities of near, and others those of remote, ances- 
tors. In other words, all the variations that take 
place in the process of evolution, from unicellular 
organisms upward, are fortuitous, so far as benefit 
to the organism is concerned ; and natural selection 
has to perform the whole work of adapting them to 
environment. 

Now let us remember that life has to be raised 
from the form in which it exists only as a single cell 
through all the stages of increasing complexity that 
have culminated in man. Natural selection cannot 
achieve this wonder of constructive organization. 
For it is, as we have seen, nothing but a principle of 
repression. Can variation accomplish it ? 

We must assume that when variation from exter- 
nal sources came to an end, the individuals that 
modified each other's offspring in sexual reproduc- 
tion were essentially homogeneous. What differ- 
ences they had were the differences of comparatively 
simple organisms of the same species. Should we 
not naturally suppose that the continual mingling of 
the reproductive elements of individuals of the same 
species would have a tendency to neutralize each 
other ? But let us suppose the opposite, — that, 
owing to the tenacity with which the germ-plasm re- 
tains all the variations that have ever found their 
way into it, all the original characteristics survive, 



EVOLUTION. 269 

and, by their endless combinations, produce an in- 
finity of differences for natural selection to . work 
upon. Still, all these differences are on the same 
plane, and the suppression of a part of them can 
never raise them above that plane. To accomplish 
this we must have an additional principle, — a prin- 
ciple of construction that makes continually for a 
more complex organization, that builds up organisms 
by appropriating new elements, which it coordinates 
and binds together in subordination to more and 
more comprehensive units. 

Let us then proceed to postulate the existence of 
such a principle, and ask, is it possible, with its aid, 
to account for the evolution of all the adaptations 
of the world without an adapting intelligence? 
There are those who think so. Herbert Spencer and 
G. H. Lewes in England, Nageli and Eimer in Ger- 
many, may be cited, as representatives of those who 
hold the two following propositions : First, a very 
important influence in the determination of forms 
proceeds from internal factors, acting in definite di- 
rections. Second, these factors are purely mechan- 
ical and chemical. 

Mr. Lewes states his view in a general way as fol- 
lows : " The evolution of organisms, like the evolu- 
tion of crystals or the evolution of islands and con- 
tinents, is determined, first, by laws inherent in the 
substances evolved, and, second, by relations to the 
medium in which the evolution takes place." 1 In 
opposition to the hypothesis that natural selection, 
acting externally upon evolved forms, has deter- 

1 The Nature of Life, sec. 124. 



270 WHAT IS REALITY? 

mined all the established characteristics of organ- 
isms, he calls attention to the many analogies that 
exist, not simply among animals at the extreme ends 
of the scale, but also between animals and plants 
where the idea of a direct kinship is out of the ques- 
tion. " Such cases," he says, " are commonly robbed 
of their due significance by being dismissed as coin- 
cidences. But what determines the coincidence ? If 
we assume, as we are justified in assuming, that the 
possible directions of organic combination and the 
resultant forms are limited, there must inevitably 
occur such coincident lines." 1 The abruptness with 
which exceedingly complex structures enter the pro- 
cess of evolution points, he argues, to the same con- 
clusion. "The sudden appearance of new organs, 
not a trace of which is discernible in the embryo or 
adult form of organisms lower in the scale, — for 
instance, the phosphorescent and electric organs, — 
is, like the sudden appearance of new instruments in 
the social organism, such as the printing-press and 
the railway, wholly inexplicable on the theory of de- 
scent ; but it is explicable on the theory of organic 
affinity" 2 

This idea of organic affinity is derived analogically 
from what we know of chemical affinity ; and the 
development, as well as the structure of an organism, 
is said to be determined by the affinities of its con- 
stituent molecules. On no other principle, Lewes 
affirms, can we explain such facts as that, from the 
same external medium, the Articulata assimilate 
chitine, the Molluscoida cellulose, the Mollusca and 
1 The Nature of Life, sec. 117. 2 Ibid., sec. 121. 



EVOLUTION. 271 

Crustacea carbonates of lime, and the Vertebrata 
phosphates. 1 

Eimer is in substantial agreement with Lewes as 
to the points above mentioned. It is the response of 
organisms to light, air, warmth, cold, water, moist- 
ure, food, etc., that has given rise to the manifold 
variety of the organic world and to the origin of 
species. To quote his own words : " Just as in in- 
organic nature from different mother lyes different 
crystals separate, as even simple mechanical shock 
can produce dimorphous crystallization, so crystal- 
lize, if I may so express myself, in the course of 
ages, organic forms to a certain degree different, out 
of the same original mass. . . . But just because 
the form of the organism depends upon physico- 
chemical processes, it is, like the form of the inor- 
ganic crystal, a definite one, and can, when modifi- 
cation takes place, only change in certain definite 
directions." 2 With regard to the origin of species, 
he states his belief as follows : " The variation of 
species takes place not in all kinds of directions 
irregularly, but always in definite directions, and, 
indeed, in each species in a given time, in only a 
few directions." 3 

Nageli differs from Lewes and Eimer in attaching 
very little importance to external influences, and in 
throwing almost the whole stress of evolution upon 
internal factors. He holds that climatic conditions 

1 The Nature of Life, sec. 130. 

2 Organic Evolution. By G. H. Theodor Eimer, Professor of 
Zoology and Comparative Anatomy in Tubingen. (Translated, 
1890, by J. T. Cunningham, M. A., F. R. S. E. ) Page 23. 

3 Ibid., p. 20. 



272 WHAT IS REALITY ? 

and changes of nutrition have no effect on the trans- 
formation of species ; and he affirms of natural se- 
lection that it has had its effect in separating and in 
denning, but not in forming the strains. " Not a 
single phylogenetic pedigree," he says, "owes to 
competition its existence ; but the several pedigrees, 
through the extermination of intermediate forms, 
stand forth more clearly and more characteristic- 
ally." 1 In his view, internal causes depending on 
the nature of the organic substance effect the trans- 
formation of strains in definite directions in accord- 
ance with a law of "improvement." That is, the 
internal causes work continually toward a greater 
complexity and greater "perfection " of organiza- 
tion, — a perfection not simply of the relations which 
the parts of the organism sustain to each other, but 
also of the relations which the organism, as a whole, 
sustains to the outside world. 

It is only when we reach this idea of a principle 
that makes for an increase of complexity and perfec- 
tion that we have postulated in full the conditions 
which we hold to be necessary as the basis of accu- 
rate analogical reasoning from the selective act of 
man in the domestication of animals. Nageli, how- 
ever, denies that the existence of such a principle of 
improvement makes it necessary for us to infer the 
operation of an intelligently adapting power. " Su- 
perficial reasoners," he says, " have pretended to dis- 
cover mysticism in this. But the principle is one of 
mechanical nature, and constitutes the law of persist- 
ence of motion, in the field of organic evolution." 2 

1 Quoted by Eimer, p. 18. 2 Quoted by Eimer, p. 14. 



EVOLUTION. 273 

Now I wish to call particular attention to the fact 
that while there is, among these eminent evolution- 
ists, agreement as to the purely mechanical or phys- 
ico-chemical nature of the causes at work, there is 
the most profound disagreement as to the sufficiency 
of each other's explanations of the process. Eimer 
introduces his own views with the announcement that 
they are "essentially in contradiction to those of 
Weismann and to those of Nageli." Why do I call 
attention to this ? Not, I beg to explain, because I 
wish to draw the inference that all attempts to dis- 
cover the methods by which organic forms are pro- 
duced are valueless. It is our privilege to know 
more and more about the secrets of the instrumen- 
talities in the midst of which we live ; and we owe a 
great debt of gratitude to those who unveil them for 
us. Nor do I mean to intimate that we ought to ex- 
pect perfect agreement among those who frame hy- 
potheses for the guidance of further investigation. 
But if I think I can show that the nature of the 
objections urged by these scientific experts points 
to a radical defect that is common to them all, there 
is a good reason why I should emphasize the fact 
that each one of them is condemned on the ground 
of insufficiency. 

I maintain that all these explanations are true to 
a certain extent, that each one of them teaches us 
something about the instrumentalities of the natural 
world ; but, on the other hand, that they are all 
false in that they assume that there is nothing but 
instrumentality. They are unsatisfactory, and al- 
ways will be unsatisfactory to the human under- 



274 WHAT IS REALITY f 

standing because they rule out the one and only 
element that can render them satisfying, that is, 
intelligent guidance* Such schemes may indeed 
seem to those who make them to fill up the require- 
ments of the case ; but they fail to gain the assent 
of investigators who judge them from a somewhat 
different, though equally scientific, point of view. 
And the cause of such failure is, as it seems to me 
though not to them, the exclusion above mentioned. 
Thus, when Nageli finds it necessary to postulate a 
principle of " improvement " and affirms it to be 
simply the outcome of " the law of persistence of 
motion in the field of organic evolution," he seems 
to himself to have fully accounted for it. But of 
this same principle Eimer says : " Although he ex- 
plains it as a mechanico-physiological principle, I 
hold it to be a kind of striving toward a goal or 
teleology in face of which a directing power, con- 
ceived as personal, existing outside material nature 
and ruling all things would seem to me fully justi- 
fied." 1 

The point of this criticism seems to me to be sim- 
ply this : physical laws are not sufficient to account 
for the existence of such an internal principle of 
definite, adaptive organization as that postulated by 
Nageli. And the same may be said of Weismann's 
objection to it, namely, that " we do not gain any- 
thing by adopting Nageli's theory, because the main 
problem which organic nature offers for our solu- 
tion, viz., adaptation, remains unsolved." 2 That is, 
a principle that operates mechanically from within 

1 Organic Evolution, p. 53. 2 Essays upon Heredity, p. 298. 



EVOLUTION. 215 

does not explain adaptation. I certainly agree with 
both these criticisms. A mechanical principle work- 
ing from within does not explain adaptation, neither 
does it explain that progressive unity, through the 
subordination of parts to, a central being, that is the 
distinguishing fact of organic evolution. But while 
agreeing, I would suggest that the futility of the ex- 
planation arises not from the fact that it works from 
within^ but from the fact that it is mechanical. 

Both of the critics seem to themselves to have 
made the physico-chemical explanation more reason- 
able when they have shown how large a part of the 
process must be attributed to the action of environ- 
ment. But is this really so ? Eimer finds analo- 
gies derived from the phenomena of chemistry and 
crystallization very satisfying. But in what way do 
these help us with regard to adaptation ? The trans- 
formations of chemistry certainly give a basis of 
reality for the assumption that organisms change, 
become something different from what they were, by 
reacting upon outside elements. They also afford 
an intelligible answer to the question, Why do the 
changes that take place in organisms follow certain 
definite directions ? But they supply no answer to 
the question, Why do these definite changes, while 
conforming to the laws of chemistry, conform at the 
same time to the equally definite, but altogether 
different requirements of an exceedingly complex 
organism? The interests, so to speak, of chemical 
laws have nothing in common with the interests of 
a delicately balanced organism in the midst of a 
heterogeneous and, in many respects, adverse world. 



276 WHAT IS REALITY? 

In other words, when such an organism is called 
upon by environment for an important readjustment, 
where, in general laws, do we find a cause or causes 
for the very particular response that is required ? 

Again, what is there in these analogies to account 
for a continually increasing complexity in organ- 
isms? Eimer seems to himself to say all that is 
necessary to be said on this point when he refers us 
to the phenomena of growth in response to external 
stimuli. But growth is known to us as a succes- 
sion of cycles that are the repetition of each other. 
There are, it is true, variations. But where, in the 
facts of simple growth, do we get any foundation 
for the idea of the evolution of progressively higher 
forms ? Weismann shares this difficulty with us, for 
he says it is impossible to comprehend how the vary- 
ing external conditions should produce a continual 
advance in evolution. 1 But is it any more possible 
to comprehend, as Weismann would have us, how 
this continual advance should result from the repres- 
sion of any number of the forms produced by the 
interbreeding of the simplest organisms ? 

Does it not appear most probable that the real 
defect in each of these explanations is the same, 
namely, the wow-recognition of intelligent guidance ? 
In each case the results reached in nature are quite 
out of relation to the analogies brought to bear upon 
them, unless we supply a concept derived from our 
subjective experience. The fact that these analo- 
gies do satisfy individual minds may be accounted 
for by the consideration that specialists, more than 

1 Organic Evolution, p. 55. 



EVOLUTION. 277 

most men, are capable of regarding one aspect of 
the world as if it were the whole of it. This capa- 
bility is one that is superinduced in them by a long- 
continued contemplation of the purely physical or 
instrumental relations of nature. But limitation to 
one view is never, even in the case of specialists, 
perfect, because in self-consciousness they are fa- 
miliar with another aspect of things ; and this other 
aspect obtrudes itself when they turn from their own 
constructive work to the criticism of the construc- 
tions of others. In short, to find an intelligence to 
which the mechanical explanation shall be perfectly 
satisfactory, we must draw upon our imaginations. 
We must postulate a being who, while very acute in 
his perception of outside realities, is absolutely de- 
void of self-consciousness. 

But now, let us observe, to such a being the 
purely mechanical explanation of all that man has 
accomplished would be equally acceptable. To us, 
or at least to most of us, who know that the world 
of man-made mechanism has been called into exist- 
ence by the inventive intelligence of minds that have, 
with set purpose, devoted themselves to the accom- 
plishment of definite ends, it would certainly seem a 
hopeless task to explain its origin from any other 
standpoint. But one having no knowledge whatever 
of intelligence would never feel the need of it in his 
explanations. He would rest satisfied in the belief 
that everything beyond the limits of his observation 
is as purely mechanical as that which has been sub- 
mitted to it ; and he would be justified in making 
his knowledge of physical sequences go as far as 



278 WHAT IS REALITY t 

possible in framing an explanation of the phenom- 
ena, leaving the gaps to be filled in by future dis- 
coveries. He might epitomize his conclusions as to 
the rise and development of machinery something as 
follows : — 

The human organism is a complex of closely in- 
tegrated and mutually sustaining forces ; it there- 
fore not only holds its own as against the pressure 
of other forces, but it tends, through its action upon 
environment, to organize some of these in its own 
favor. Much of its contact with these outer forces 
tends simply to the destruction of that which op- 
poses. But in the infinite variety of changes some 
new combinations will be formed that are useful to 
and harmonious with the more powerful combination 
of the organism, and thus become closely associated 
with it, — attached, as it were, to its system. But 
these newly formed outworks of the organism have 
no great stability. They are continually giving 
place to new forms. For a continuation of the pro- 
cess that brought them into existence tends on the 
one hand to increase the complexity, usefulness, and 
stability of some ; and, on the other, to throw off 
some, because better combinations have rendered 
them useless, and therefore obstructive. 

Further, as the human organism is an integrant 
part of the greater social organism, any addition 
that has gained a considerable degree of stability 
through its usefulness tends to multiply itself. 
That is, it makes its appearance at many points in 
connection with individuals or groups of individuals. 
And at some of these points, the constituent units 



EVOLUTION. 279 

of the greater organism become specialized in large 
numbers for the elaboration of external mechanism, 
as nerve cells are specialized in the lesser organism. 
Closely associated together, as cells are associated in 
ganglia, these specialized units serve the organism 
by converting material that is indifferent to it into 
appliances that greatly extend its power. 

The cause of the origin and persistence of ma- 
chines might then be summed up something as fol- 
lows : They have had their beginnings in chance 
combinations, resulting from the contact of the or- 
ganism with environment. The organism tends to 
attach to itself every combination of forces that, so 
to speak, locks in with its own system ; and these 
are duplicated and multiplied in the social organism 
in obedience to the principle that makes for equi- 
librium, or a balance of forces. The facts that sup- 
port such an explanation are facts of universal 
significance. First, advantage to the organism is 
always, without any exception, the condition of the 
retention of any outside mechanism. For although 
it may not in every case be possible to demonstrate 
how this and that portion are useful, the evidence 
from the great mass known to be useful is over- 
whelming. Whenever one form is replaced by an- 
other the increased efficiency and productive power 
of the new form is in almost every case apparent. 

It is true that, sometimes, old forms continue to 
exist alongside of more efficient new ones ; and this, 
at first sight, would seem to be the contravention 
of our principle. But further scrutiny will always 
show that the old form is more useful, under certain 



280 WHAT IS BEALITYf 

circumstances, than the new. Mowing - machines 
have to a very great extent displaced hand-scythes. 
But scythes are not altogether excluded, because 
mowing-machines are not available on very rough 
lands. Thus, the very circumstance that seemed to 
form an exception to our principle turns out to be a 
corroboration of it. 

Another fact of universal significance is that all 
machines, except the first, have come into existence 
by means of a succession of slight improvements, 
each one of which has been a modification of pre- 
viously existing forms. As we follow down the 
series that results from an arrangement of machines 
in the order of their complexity, we shall find that 
this corresponds, in its successive stages, very 
closely to the stages of another series made by 
arranging machines in the order of time. The sim- 
plest were the first to appear, then those that were 
a little less simple, then those that were somewhat 
complex, and so on. This law, it is true, is not so 
absolute in its application as the previous one. Ad- 
vantage to the organism governs everything; and 
in some cases this involves retrogression from a 
complex form to one that is somewhat simpler and 
more efficient. But such cases are only back-eddies 
in the general stream of development. It is also 
true that we cannot verify in every case the assump- 
tion that all the improvements in machinery have 
resulted from slight modifications in preexisting 
forms. But as this is, without question, the general 
rule, no adverse argument can be constructed from 
these exceptional cases. We are not in possession 



EVOLUTION. 281 

of all the facts, and we are justified in presuming 
that, if we were, these apparent exceptions would 
prove to be no exceptions at all. 

It will, of course, be urged that this account of 
the origin and growth of machines is only a carica- 
ture of the explanations of evolution given by those 
who exclude intelligence from the process. Cer- 
tainly it is not an exact parallel to that doctrine. 
But we maintain that it represents them truly in 
two very important respects. In the first place, it 
illustrates without exaggeration the disadvantages 
under which we labor when we essay the explana- 
tion of the phenomena of nature from the stand- 
point of outside spectators. And, in the second 
place, it is a perfectly fair presentation of the 
method of reasoning pursued by those who treat 
any combination of unintelligent agencies as the 
sufficient cause of all the adaptations by which liv- 
ing things are fitted to their environment. There is 
in it the same mixture of fact and fancy, of rational 
deduction and baseless assumption. 

We have maintained, all through our argument, 
that the imagination is the pioneer faculty in all our 
speculative constructions of reality. But we have 
insisted that it can be a reliable guide only when it 
takes its departure from some unquestionable fact of 
experience. When we glibly attributed the origin 
of useful machinery to chance combinations brought 
about by the encounter of the organism with envi- 
ronment, we were using the imagination lawlessly ; 
and, if brought to book, we should have been unable 
to point to any mechanical principle or experience 



282 WHAl IS REALITY 1 ? 

that would support such an assumption. It is in no 
respect otherwise when the adaptations of the nat- 
ural world are referred to mechanical causes. No 
mechanical laws hitherto made known to us are 
adequate to the production of such results. 

Weismann very properly emphasizes the rule that 
we are not justified in " assuming the existence of a 
new and totally unknown principle until it has been 
proved that known forces are insufficient for the ex- 
planation of the observed phenomena." But this is 
precisely what the advocates of the above hypothe- 
ses are doing. What is the problem ? I will take 
Weismann's statement of it : " The main problem 
which the organic world offers for our solution is the 
'purposefulness seen in organisms." 1 Now what 
kind of a mechanical or chemical working is that 
which, in connection with Natural Selection, affords 
a sufficient explanation of this characteristic ? Not 
one, I will venture to say, that is known to science. 
On the contrary, it is a new and totally unknown 
principle. And those who assume it are deliber- 
ately turning their backs upon a very well-known 
principle that is in every way a satisfactory expla- 
nation of the purposefulness seen in organisms. 

Intelligence is, in our experience, the full and 
adequate cause of the adaptations that have found 
a place in the little world of man's influence. Why, 
then, should we set aside this cause when we are 
speculating about the adaptations in nature ? If, in 
the infancy of human thought, too free a use was 
made of this analogy, is that a good reason for now 

1 Essays upon Heredity, p. 257. 



EVOLUTION. 283 

altogether excluding it from our interpretation of 
nature ? Science, by revealing a world of instru- 
mentality, has not gone to the bottom of the matter, 
and if we rest in the thought of a multiplicity of 
subordinate agencies as if there were nothing be- 
yond these, it is only that we are bewildered, — that 
the plenitude of our knowledge has overpowered our 
judgment. 

The fact that we can nowhere detect the points 
at which intelligence exerts its shaping influence is 
no argument against the reality of such influence. 
We cannot detect the points at which the modify- 
ing power of the human mind is brought to bear 
upon the apparently closed circle of physical causes. 
And, if foresight and intellectual guidance are prop- 
erly regarded as the cause of human adaptations, 
they are just as properly regarded as the cause of 
the adaptations in nature that so closely resemble 
them. The chain of mechanical events is just as 
accommodating in the one case as in the other, and 
not one whit more so. 

It is easy to say that the relations that man sus- 
tains to what we call his planned constructions are 
as purely mechanical as any other relations, and 
that they only seem to have an exceptional kind of 
efficiency. But even supposing this to be true, it 
has to be recognized that the apparently exceptional 
efficiency — the belief in himself — gives rise to 
very real and very important exceptional behavior 
on the part of man. In view of relations that appeal 
to him as purely mechanical he conducts himself in 
an entirely different way from what he does in view 



284 WHAT IS REALITY* 

of relations that lie conceives to be intelligent or 
spiritual. He cannot live without making this dif- 
ference. Remove from his life the conception of 
spiritual relations and man would cease to be man. 
If, then, from the beginning until now, the require- 
ments of living have indorsed and enforced the 
recognition of the truth of this conception, is it 
likely that we are on the right track when we ex- 
clude it from our interpretation of the universe ? 
And, on the other hand, if the unity of the world, 
the repetition on different scales of the same princi- 
ples, has been the guiding thought of all scientific 
progress, is it not eminently scientific to make intel- 
ligence play an important part in our interpretation 
of nature ? 

This is not the same as to say that it is reasonable 
to trace every particular event to a special decree 
of a supreme intelligence. It is not the equivalent 
of that view that prompted Mr. Darwin to ask : 
" Do you believe that when a swallow snaps up a 
gnat God designed that that particular swallow 
should snap up that particular gnat at that particu- 
lar time ? " 1 To hold such a doctrine we must fol- 
low the construction of an irresponsible imagination 
in preference to the analogies of human experience. 
If we cleave to that experience as a guide, we shall 
necessarily include in our thought a vast amount of 
instrumentality, — a world of subordinate agencies. 
The development of this view will be the task of the 
next chapter. 

1 Darwin's Life and Letters, vol. i. p. 284. 



CHAPTEE XI. 

CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE. 

What is it to create ? May we not say simply, 
To create is to originate ? Surely, this touches the 
distinctive idea of creation, but it is not of itself 
sufficient. We must add another element and say, 
Creation is designed origination. But what is it 
to originate? Do we mean absolute origination, 
creation out of nothing ? or is the term properly 
applied to that relative kind of origination that con- 
sists in forming, from elements already in existence, 
new combinations ? I think we ought, in practical 
discussions, to use the word only in this latter 
sense ; because this is the only kind of creation that 
our experience tells us anything about. 

Men never could have had a thought of God as 
the Creator of the world, were it not that they had 
first known themselves as creators. In the earlier 
part of our argument we labored to prove that this 
knowledge of ourselves as causative agents is no de- 
lusion, but the truth of truths, the reality underly- 
ing all realities. We are therefore constrained to 
treat it with the greatest respect ; to examine it 
carefully, to find all that it contains, and at the 
same time to keep conscientiously within its limits. 
In doing this, one of the very first discoveries we 



286 WHAT IS BEALITY? 

make is that the idea of creation out of nothing 
finds no indorsement. As we know the world, 
there is an order of nature, there are uniformities 
of action, continuity of motion. When we create 
we do not act independently of these, but, so to 
speak, by their permission. We guide them into 
channels which they, without us, would not have 
taken ; and so, through their constancy, accomplish 
our special ends. 

When, therefore, we try to rise from our own ex- 
periences to the thought of a Supreme Creator, we 
abandon our base of reality unless we retain the 
order of nature as an inseparable part of our con- 
ception. Our analogy obliges us to postulate a Be- 
ing who is not only coexistent with that order, but 
who also works by means of it, controlling, modify- 
ing, and harmonizing its elements, according to a 
plan known in its fullness only to himself. It would 
be preposterous for us to say that the order of 
nature is not of God's creating ; it would be equally 
preposterous for us to affirm that it is. We know 
ourselves to be a part of that order. We know, 
at the same time, that we are efficient, originating 
parts of it. Within a limited sphere, we control, 
alter, reconstruct, the elements with which we come 
into immediate contact. Expanding this thought to 
the Supreme Being, we think of Him, not, indeed, 
as a part of the order of nature, but as the living 
head and centre of that order. It is a part of Him, 
as our bodies are a part of us. His thought and his 
initiative are constantly working in and through it. 
We can no more think of its beginning than we can 



CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE. 287 

think of his beginning. He and it are, for us, two 
aspects of that which eternally is. 

A second discovery revealed by a careful exami- 
nation of our analogy is that in philosophical discus- 
sions we have habitually neglected to make use of 
some of its most significant phenomena. When we 
reflect upon man as a creator we naturally send our 
thoughts abroad to gather, as into one picture, the 
various external evidences of his inventive skill. 
We think of the cities he has built, of the objects of 
art with which he has stored them, of the mechan- 
ism he has constructed, the books that he has writ- 
ten. But all the time we are thus engaged we are 
overlooking and neglecting a realm where the crea- 
tive power of man is most really at work. We are, 
in fact, occupying ourselves with the secondary, 
comparatively remote results of his constructive 
power, oblivious of the fact that all his primary, 
immediate creations are to be sought and found 
elsewhere. 

No mechanism has ever been put together, no work 
of art constructed, that was not the outcome of an 
antecedently created organization of nerve sub- 
stance in the brain of some man. It is not strange 
that we have overlooked this department of man's 
activity, for we have no immediate knowledge of 
the transformations and combinations that are con- 
tinually taking place in the nerve-cell world. The 
very existence of the minute organisms that com- 
pose it has only recently been made known to us by 
science. But now that we are no longer ignorant of 
them, it behooves us to make the most of the assist- 



288 WHAT IS BEALITY? 

ance they are capable of bringing to speculative 
thought. 

Some of the greatest difficulties that have hitherto 
attended our efforts to make use of man's creative 
experience for the solution of the world problem 
are directly traceable to our preoccupation with the 
external evidences of his skill. Every human con- 
struction, viewed externally, is the work, more or 
less immediately, of men's hands. But nature seems 
to disclose to us a Being who creates without hands. 
To imagine a world-creator, therefore, we have had 
to depart from our analogy, to assume something 
that was quite foreign to all our experience. Or, 
more correctly speaking, our conception, excluded 
from the realm of real experiences, has fastened 
itself upon an imaginary one ; and the Creator of 
the world has appeared to us in the guise of an all- 
powerful magician. 

But the moment we turn our attention to what 
goes on within us, the magic of the magician is 
nothing to the reality of our every-day experience. 
Creation without hands is seen to be the rule, not 
the exception. The brain of every man is a cosmos, 
a world of plastic elements that are to a very con- 
siderable degree the instruments of his intelligence 
and will. In this world he thinks, and, obedient to 
his thought, nerve cells are modified, and cell combi- 
nations are formed, that would otherwise have no 
existence. Notwithstanding the smallness of these 
elements, the world in which they energize is just as 
real as the world of forms by which we are sur- 
rounded. The cerebral forms have, it is true, no 



CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE. 289 

resemblance to our thoughts or to their counterparts 
in the external world ; but we can have no hesita- 
tion in affirming that they are equally complex, 
equally elaborate in the adjustment of their parts 
to each other, and that they have the same unity. 

We do not know how man creates. He makes 
constructive efforts with certain definite ends in 
view, and elaborate nerve combinations are the re- 
sult. If what he desires to attain comes to him 
suddenly and with a high degree of completeness, 
his consciousness of creation is very much less than 
when he has reached it after many efforts, some of 
which have been failures. In the former case he 
is inclined to attribute the combination that has so 
suddenly made its appearance to an agency other 
than his own. It is said to be an inspiration. But 
in the latter he is very conscious of labor, of much 
ineffectual striving, of fatigue, of progress, of final 
success as the reward of many efforts. 

What he experiences at such times finds its 
analogy in the processes that make for the external 
realization of his thought. A sculptor, for instance, 
sets out to model a statue. The first attempt may 
be so wide of the mark that he reduces it to the 
shapeless lump of clay out of which it was formed. 
But when he has made a beginning that is more or 
less to his mind, he goes on altering and modifying, 
reconstructing parts, but retaining the model as a 
whole. Thus he reaches a stage of perfection that, 
if not satisfying, is all that appears to be attainable. 
So with the inventor of machinery. If it is at all 
elaborate, the perfected result is the one combina- 



290 WHAT IS REALITY 1 

tion that succeeds many other less perfect combina- 
tions that have been tried and found wanting. In 
each of these cases the series of forms that has 
found its way into the external world is the expres- 
sion of only a few that have been chosen from in- 
numerable combinations called into existence by the 
creative but also selective and destructive ego. 

It is not otherwise with what we call the acquire- 
ment of faculties. From a mechanical point of 
view, an acquired faculty is an exceedingly complex 
piece of mechanism that has been constructed by 
the intelligently directed efforts of the ego to whom 
it belongs. Every skilled performer on the piano 
has constructed for himself such a mechanism not 
only by a long succession of efforts, but also by the 
suppression of innumerable faults to which some of 
these efforts have given rise. 

Further illustration of this point can hardly be 
necessary. The facts we have reviewed are palpa- 
ble, unquestionable facts of every-day experience ; 
and the bearing of them upon the larger problem of 
creation seems to me to be almost equally clear and 
unavoidable. If this world is an organic unity, if 
all its parts are related to each other, why should we 
hesitate to follow out the analogy which is pressed 
upon us from every side by the evidences of adapta- 
tion ? Why should we not think of the whole proto- 
plasmic world as a specialized part of the greater 
organism upon which the Creator impresses his 
thought, as a man does his upon the congeries of 
nerve cells that he calls his brain ? 

At any rate, we must assume that the reader has 



CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE. 291 

followed us thus far, for we wish to take him much 
farther, — to persuade him that man is not simply 
an originator of new combinations of nerve cells, but 
that he is a creator of living species that faithfully 
reproduce their kind from generation to generation. 
We have already seen that the mechanical symbolism 
that is commonly resorted to for a conception of these 
combinations is not only imperfect but essentially 
misleading, and that it is only from biology that we 
can learn their true nature. Nerve cells, this sci- 
ence tells us, are living beings, individual existences, 
which admit of classification, according to their 
functions, into species ; and each one of these spe- 
cies reproduces its kind, like other unicellular or- 
ganisms. It is owing to this continuity, this per- 
manency of type in each species of nerve cells, that 
our faculties are preserved to us without alteration, 
notwithstanding the destruction of the originally 
modified cells. 

Now the greater part of these cells come to us 
with their characteristics already fixed. The vari- 
ous species which constitute what we call vital or- 
gans, a full quota of which every normal human 
being inherits, have been formed somehow during 
the evolution of the race, and they remain the same 
throughout life. But in every one there is a class 
of brain cells that is susceptible of further differen- 
tiation and organization ; and it is by means of 
these that the human creative faculty is enabled to 
accomplish its ends. The ego, so to speak, impreg- 
nates these cells with specific characteristics which 
are often faithfully transmitted from generation to 



292 WHAT IS BEALITYt 

generation during the life of the individual. We 
know this to be the case, because acquired or super- 
induced characteristics continue to appear in the 
activities of the person with whom they originate. 

We are not oblivious of the fact that a large 
class of cell modifications are made without the 
intention of the ego. Some of the phenomena of 
memory point to changes thus registered in the 
cerebral ganglia. And the wonderful persistence 
of these illustrates, in the most marked way, the 
fact of transmitted cell specializations. The experi- 
ences of childhood often reappear most vividly in 
advanced old age. What we wish to show is 
that intentionally produced specializations follow 
the same law. The skill of a musical performer, of 
one who has learned to write, or of one who has 
acquired a foreign language, remains, although the 
brain cells originally educated may long ago have 
perished. 

We have, then, within the realm of human activi- 
ties, a true instance of the creation, by intelligence, 
of specialized organisms, — organisms that, subject 
to further modifications from the ego, reproduce 
their kind like the different species of animals. 
Turning back to our analogy with this thought we 
are more than ever impelled to the belief that the 
world of exceedingly diversified but closely related 
living forms, plants, insects, birds, fishes, beasts, and 
men, each producing after their kind, are the more 
or less direct results of the divine creative thought 
working upon the protoplasm of our planet. 

Does this seem to the reader a fanciful and 



CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE. 293 

unnecessary conception? As fanciful, I have no 
apology to offer for it. All new adjustments of 
our thought are fanciful until we get used to them. 
But as unnecessary it certainly calls for defense. I 
do not mean that we are to argue over again the 
question as to the necessity of recognizing the pres- 
ence of a creative intelligence in nature. We must 
consider that poiut as settled. But even when it is 
granted that intelligence has been a factor in crea- 
tion, it may be urged that there is no necessity of 
postulating a Supreme Being. The creative faculty 
of man does, it may be said, afford us a clue to the 
mysteries of origination. But this clue ought to be 
followed not into a higher, unknown realm, but into 
that realm of known reality that is open to our ob- 
servation. Pursuing this course, we may discover 
that the adaptations, of which nature is full, are the 
outcome, not of a single creative mind, but the cu- 
mulative product of innumerable little minds. At 
least, before we invoke the agency of a higher being, 
let us satisfy ourselves that the results we contem- 
plate could not have been brought about by adjust- 
ments intelligently formed, through countless gener- 
ations, by the very beings whose transformations we 
study. There is much to be said for this view, and 
we must give* it our careful attention. 

That we may approach it understandingly, let us 
premise that the intelligently formed organizations 
of brain substance that we have been considering 
may be legitimately regarded as organs of the hu- 
man body. Like the other organs of the body, they 
are made up of specialized elements that have been 



294 WHAT IS BEALITY? 

brought into particular relations to each other for 
the discharge of very definite functions. The na- 
ture of the functions discharged by these organs 
leaves no room for doubt as to their elaborateness 
and permanence. By their acquisition individuals 
are, in some respects, separated from each other as 
widely as different animals are separated by the 
peculiarities of species. We speak within bounds 
when we say that the performances of a great in- 
strumentalist are as impossible to one not cultivated 
in music as flying is impossible to an ox ; and if 
the nervous organization on which the musician's 
power depends could be seen by us in its separate- 
ness, as we see the wings of a bird, we should 
probably have no hesitation in saying that he had 
acquired an organ not possessed by the generality 
of men. 

This conclusion is emphasized when we reflect 
further upon the wonderful independence displayed 
by these newly formed combinations of nerve sub- 
stance. For instance, when a man who has been 
absorbed for a long time in turning over and over 
certain thoughts that have not the remotest connec- 
tion with any kind of external activity, suddenly, 
and almost without consciousness, seizes a pen, and 
with great rapidity and variety of motion transfers 
those thoughts to paper, there can be no question 
as to the existence within him of an organ of great 
complexity and independence. There is here an in- 
strumentality, — we may call it an organism or a 
mechanism, — that, when the vital forces are turned 
on, works with an ease and regularity almost equal 



CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE. 295 

to that of the printing-press that subsequently cov- 
ers other sheets of paper with similar characters 
expressing the same thoughts. 

If, then, we have found a class of organs, the 
origin of which is well known to us, the scientific 
method requires us to ask at once, Does the know- 
ledge of this one class indicate the secret of the ori- 
gin of all classes ? The intelligence of the individual 
is the creative cause of these organs : can it be that 
the great process of organ-forming, that has been 
going on from the advent of life on our planet, has 
at every step been due to the same agency? The 
only possible way of establishing such an hypothesis 
is to show that the organs intelligently formed by 
one generation are inherited by subsequent genera- 
tions. 

It is at this point that the attempt to trace the 
origin of organs to the intelligence of the creature 
meets its first great difficulty. But we shall not 
find it insuperable. The most cursory investigation, 
it is true, tells us that most if not all of the organs 
formed by man's intelligence are ^o^-transmissible. 
The child of a man who has spent a part of every 
day of his life in writing inherits apparently no trace 
of the organization which was like a second nature 
to the parent. If he learns to write, he must begin 
where his father began, and build up from the 
simplest elements an organization for himself. The 
single letters have to be constructed at first with 
great care and no little effort ; then they are joined 
together ; word-forming, spelling, sentence-construc- 
tion, and so on, follow each other, till at last he has 



296 WHAT IS BEALITYt 

acquired that which nature refuses to bestow as a 
free gift. If the child had been descended from 
illiterate parents, he would have been able to ac- 
quire the art, and perhaps with equal facility. 

The apparent universality of this law of limita- 
tion has led some eminent writers, as for instance 
Weismann and Ribot, to the conclusion that the pro- 
cess of evolution, subsequent to the unicellular stage, 
has not been affected by the acquired characteristics 
of individuals. But there is something to be said 
on the other side. Though it should be admitted 
that no human being has ever bequeathed an intelli- 
gently formed organization to his posterity, it does 
not necessarily follow that the same rule holds good 
for animals lower in the scale. Evolution gains its 
ends by a variety of processes ; and under changed 
conditions it not infrequently abandons one method 
for another, though the end attained be the same in 
both cases. Thus reproduction by division is suc- 
ceeded by amphigonic reproduction ; water-breath- 
ing by means of gills gives place to air-breathing 
by means of lungs. 

Now let us remind ourselves that the acquirements 
of the human individual do become the acquirements 
of the race. They are inherited by succeeding gener- 
ations, though the transmission is effected by a dif- 
ferent process from that which is technically called 
heredity. Let us observe, moreover, that a very 
striking resemblance exists between the stages of 
these so very different processes. For the sake of 
comparison, we will outline these stages in parallel 
columns : — 



CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE. 



297 



Physical or Enforced 
Heredity. 



Intelligent or Optional 
Heredity. 



The appearance of an or- 
ganic change as the peculi- 
arity of an individual. 



The appearance of the 
crude beginnings of an art 
as the creation of an indi- 
vidual. 



H. 

The spread of this organic 
peculiarity by enforced he- 
redity till there appears a 
species characterized by it. 

in. 

This newly acquired or- 
ganization is again modified 
by other individual changes 
which in their turn become 
the property of the species. 

rv. 

Each individual of a spe- 
cies becomes possessed of 
this accumulation of ances- 
tral organs by an abbrevi- 
ated recapitulation of the 
stages through which the 
species has passed. 



II. 



The spread of this prim- 
itive art by intelligent com- 
munication till it becomes 
the property of the race. 

in. 

The art, thus made com- 
mon property, receives fur- 
ther individual develop- 
ments, which again become 
the property of the race. 

rv. 

Each individual who be- 
comes the possessor of this 
art acquires it by an abbre- 
viated recapitulation of the 
stages that characterized its 
development in the race. 



Now, since the lower animals have not yet reached 
the stage at which the inheritance of newly acquired 



298 WHAT IS REALITY f 

organs by intelligent communication can be relied 
upon, may it not be that among them the trans- 
mission of intelligently formed characteristics is 
effected by enforced heredity ? Many facts are ad- 
duced by careful observers of domesticated animals 
that seem to point to this conclusion. For instance, 
it is said that young shepherd dogs, the very first 
time they are taken to pasture, will sometimes herd 
sheep with as much skill and discrimination as if 
they had been long and carefully trained to the 
business. 1 

Have we not here a case of intelligent acquisi- 
tion made subject to the law of enforced heredity? 
There can be no question but that the art of herd- 
ing sheep was, in the first instance, intelligently 
acquired by an ancestor of the young dog that now 
practices it instinctively ; and we are justified in 
assuming that this art or habit, wherever it appears, 
is the outward manifestation of an internal structure 
or organ that has been built up by successive com- 
binations of nerve elements. When, therefore, we 
have in the young dog all the external manifesta- 
tions of this elaborate organ, we conclude that the 
organ has, so to speak, formed itself in virtue of the 
naturally inherited growth tendencies of the indi- 
vidual. It is as if the roots of this faculty remained 
in the race. The acquired arts of men are like the 
annuals that grow and flower luxuriantly in our 
gardens for one season, but perish, root and branch, 

1 Fop other instances of inherited acquisitions, see Romanes's 
Mental Evolution in Animals, pp. 193-199, and Eimer's Oryumc 
Evolution, sec. vi. 



CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE. 299 

when winter comes. But the art of sheep-herding 
has, to some extent, become perennial in the collie 
race. It springs up in each successive generation 
without any seed-sowing or planting. When the 
proper season or stage in the ontogenetic series has 
been reached, it is there bearing its natural fruit. 

Does it not seem as if we had here the key to 
what has ever been one of the most interesting and 
baffling of all the mysteries of nature ? That which 
we call instinct has always appeared to us as the 
product of a well-known process, minus the process. 
It is the fruit of the tree of intelligent experience 
without the tree. Now, then, let us make the hypo- 
thesis that all instincts have originated in the same 
manner, — that they are all the outward expression 
of special organizations that have been inherited 
from ancestors who formed them intelligently. 

Up to this point we have been treading a toler- 
ably firm path ; but from this on, the footing is 
softer and softer, while the load we carry is aug- 
mented at every step. As we descend the zoological 
scale, the evidences of a general intelligence dimin- 
ish rapidly, while we continually encounter instincts, 
the nature of which seems to preclude the possibility 
of intelligent origination. For instance, how is it 
possible that insects, that never have anything to do 
with their progeny after the egg stage, should have 
acquired by experience the wisdom that seems to 
guide them in depositing their eggs ? Many of the 
provisions they make for their young imply, not 
simply a long look ahead, but a truly- scientific skill 
in the choice of means for the supply of wants that 
have as yet no existence. 



300 WHAT IS REALITY? 

The sphex forms a burrow in which to deposit its 
eggs. This, when all is ready, is to be closed care- 
fully to make it safe for the larva that is to be 
hatched in it. But, before the closing, a very im- 
portant matter has to be attended to. Just as a 
vessel bound on a long voyage is stored with provi- 
sions, so the burrow in which the young of the sphex 
is to begin life is stored with food. But more re- 
markable yet is the means by which this is accom- 
plished. The food laid aside for the larva must be 
animal food, and it must be alive. It must be alive 
but not active, for it must remain several weeks in 
the burrow before the hatched-out larva is ready for 
it. Now there are several species of this insect, 
and each species remains faithful to a particular 
kind of prey. One provides spiders for its offspring, 
another beetles, another crickets, and another cater- 
pillars. And the marvelous thing is that each spe- 
cies knows just where to sting its prey so as to para- 
lyze without killing it. If it is a spider, the sting 
is delivered unerringly upon the large ganglion 
which is the nerve centre of the spider. If it is a 
beetle, the sting finds the main aggregation of 
nerves by passing through the membranes between 
the first and second pair of legs. If it is a cricket, 
the end is attained by piercing three nerve centres ; 
and if it is a caterpillar, a series of from six to nine 
stings is given, one between each of the segments of 
the body. 1 

Another class of instincts that is particularly try- 
ing to our hypothesis is that which characterizes the 
1 Romanes's Mental Evolution in Animals. 



CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE. 301 

neuters among bees and ants. These are the indi- 
viduals of the colony that as workers astonish us 
by the elaborateness of their apparently intelligent 
operations. But the males and developed females, 
from whom the neuters spring, never exhibit the in- 
stincts that appear in their progeny. It is needless 
to multiply examples of this kind, nor will I weary 
the reader by commentiug upon those given. To 
some zoologists they appear to be insurmountable. 
Romanes, following Darwin, believes that " many 
instincts are displayed by animals too low in the 
zoological scale to admit of our supposing that they 
can ever have been due to intelligence." 1 He also 
regards the case of neuter insects as an insuperable 
obstacle to our hypothesis. He therefore divides 
instincts into two classes having quite different ori- 
gins. Those that may be traced to the intelligence 
of ancestors form a numerous and very important 
class by themselves. But no less important is the 
other class, that owes its origin to natural selection 
working upon purposeless activities that chance to 
be useful to the organism. 

Mr. Lewes, on the other hand, recognizes no im- 
possibilities. With a supreme faith in the law of 
continuity, he commits himself to the belief that all 
instincts have had an intelligent origin ; or, to put 
it in his own words, that " instinct is organized ex- 
perience." His statement of the argument is as 
follows : " Since we know that many instincts, which 
are manifested as soon as the organisms have ac- 
quired the requisite development and are appropri- 
1 Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 191. 



802 WHAT IS REALITY t 

ately stimulated, were originally acquired in ances- 
tral experiences . . . and since we know that in- 
stincts, like many diseases, are due to registered 
modification of structure transmitted by heredity, 
and since those registrations are themselves acquired 
results, the conclusion that all instincts are acquired 
becomes irresistible." l 

Theodor Eimer apparently reasons in the same 
way, for in speaking of bees he says : " If we sup- 
pose that their collection of honey has become me- 
chanical, that the bees no longer reason consciously 
in performing this labor, yet we must assume that 
originally they began to collect honey from reflec- 
tion and reasoning ; for otherwise they would not 
have come to do it mechanically." 2 

The fact that the instincts of the workers are not 
exhibited by their immediate progenitors is, for him, 
no bar to this belief. He calls attention to a well- 
recognized tendency in some of the lower animals to 
a specialization of organs that sometimes results in 
separation. Locomotive organs, sexual organs, di- 
gestive organs, in some cases remain connected with 
the body by a peduncle, while in others they become 
entirely detached and swim about independently. 
A trace of this tendency remains, even in the higher 
animals that are descended from species in which 
there was no separation of sex. For, to use his own 
words, " wherever a male and female sex exists, 
there is no perfect individual. The two parts abso- 
lutely belong to one another, and only form a whole 

1 The Limitations of Knowledge, sec. 21 a. 

2 Organic Evolution, p. 425. 



CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE. 303 

together." 1 In accordance with this principle, he 
believes the different orders represented in the hive 
to have been derived from a primitive form that 
combined within itself all the functions of bee life. 
From this primitive form the specialized forms have 
sprung; and each of these develops a particular 
part of the organization as its inheritance. The re- 
productive members never develop the instincts of 
workers, but they go on transmitting them, as it 
were, in sealed packages, from primitive ancestors, 
by whom they were intelligently formed. 

So much for this controversy. I have laid both 
views before the reader, because there seems to me 
to be reason in both. On the one hand, I agree 
with Romanes, that the intelligence of the creature 
becomes a less and less satisfactory explanation of 
the phenomena as we descend the zoological scale, 
and that it finally gives out altogether. In so far as 
it is satisfactory it enlarges our conception of the 
sphere in which the organizing intelligence of the 
creature is effective. But even if we should agree 
with Lewes and Eimer that all instincts, ordinarily 
regarded as such, are the result of ancestral expe- 
riences, we should still be far from accounting for 
the origin of all organs. 

I say ordinarily regarded as such, because the 
history of a very important class of organs which 
we have not yet tried to account for seems to me to 
point clearly to another series of instincts. These, 
because they manifest themselves in the embryo, we 
may call embryotic. All the organs which succeed 

1 Organic Evolution, p. 426. 



304 WHAT IS REALITY t 

each other in the growth of the foetus are the result 
of certain very marked differentiations that occur at 
specific epochs in its history ; and each of these new 
departures seems to me to be caused by nothing 
other than that which in the more mature individual 
we call instinct. We may certainly affirm that the 
beginning of each new differentiation is a function 
of the embryo, or of some part of it, at a particular 
stage of its existence. This new function appears 
precisely as new instincts appear in ^>os£-embryotic 
life. It is, on the part of the embryo, an impulse, 
in response to a particular conjunction of internal 
and external states, to do something that it has 
never done before. There is also in each of these 
unprecedented acts the same appearance of intelli- 
gence that we have observed to be the distinguishing 
characteristic of instinct ; for each one leads to a 
new organization that is wonderfully adapted to the 
future well-being of the individual. It may at first 
sight seem a sufficient explanation of these phenom- 
ena to refer them to heredity, to say, — the offspring 
develops each organ because its ancestors developed 
it. But we have to remember that there was a first 
time for each one ; and it is for this we are trying 
to account. 

Let us, for a moment, go back to the fact from 
which our analogy takes its start. When the habit 
of sheep-herding appeared fully formed in the young 
collie, we assumed the existence of a peculiar nerve 
combination to account for the peculiar trait. This 
nerve combination we were able to explain only by 
the assumption that a tendency to vary in an un- 



CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE. 305 

usual manner had somehow been wrought into the 
ordinary round of structural changes. When the 
usual repetitions of heredity had reached a certain 
stage of cerebral organization in the collie, there en- 
sued a combination that was quite foreign to former 
natural growth. 

Our knowledge of collie history enabled us to 
trace this tendency to vary in a particular manner 
to the intelligent experiences of ancestors. But how, 
we must now inquire, does this help us to account 
for the successive adaptive variations that have re- 
sulted in the formation of the vital organs of the 
collie ? We cannot ascribe them to the intelligence 
of the creature unless we are prepared to attribute 
to creatures very low in the scale a far higher degree 
of foresight and of inventive skill than has ever been 
attained by man. What shall we do? Two courses 
are open to us. We may follow Romanes in the 
assumption that when we have come to the end of 
creature intelligence, we have come to the end of all 
intelligence. Or, holding fast by our analogy, we 
may seek in a higher sphere of being for the intelli- 
gence that we cannot find in the creature ; an intelli- 
gence that works through the creature in virtue of 
organic relations that it sustains to it. 

If we follow the former course, we deliberately 
part company with the law of continuity. After 
having found a true cause of a very peculiar class of 
phenomena, we, on encountering certain difficulties, 
abandon it absolutely and assign phenomena of the 
same nature to causes that are totally different. The 
case is even worse than this. For we give up our 



306 WHAT IS REALITY? 

ascertained cause just when we are most in need of 
it, that is, when the phenomena of nature seem most 
urgently to demand intelligence for their explana- 
tion. We have to assume that a particular class of 
results, which in our experience flow from intelli- 
gence and intelligence only, are to be found in their 
highest perfection in a department of the creation 
from which intelligence is absent. But if we take 
the other alternative, extending the principle of 
Lewes and Eimer to the conclusion that wherever 
the fruits of intelligence are clearly manifested we 
must trace them to intelligence, we shall remain 
faithful to the law of continuity, and at the same 
time have a true and sufficient cause for the phe- 
nomena under discussion. 

No violence is done to the law of continuity by 
seeking in a higher sphere of being the intelligence 
that has disappeared from the lower. On the con- 
trary, we are in complete harmony with that law. 
We are finding in nature just that which this law 
constrains us to expect. 

We have seen that the human organism is a hier- 
archy of beings dominated by the ego. We have 
seen that each grade of beings within this organic 
whole leads its own life, not altogether a routine life. 
We have seen good reason to attribute intelligence 
to these various orders of beings according to their 
place in the scale of organization. There is an intel- 
ligence of the cell, there is a higher intelligence of 
the ganglion, there is above these the intelligence of 
the ego. Certain functions of the organism are re- 
ferable to the first, certain others to the second, and 



CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE. 807 

certain others still to the last. When the ego exerts 
its creative power, it does not work independently of 
the subordinate beings, but through them, producing 
modifications by virtue of its organic union with 
them. Ought we not, then, to expect to find the evi- 
dences of such a hierarchy of intelligences in the 
natural world? If the cosmos is a unity, and an 
organic unity, analogy justifies us in the hypothesis 
that it is constructed on the same general principles 
as the organisms with which we are acquainted. 

But we have no sooner made this hypothesis than 
we see that it is open to a most serious objection, 
namely, that it involves the reversal of the history 
of evolution. In the course of evolution the higher 
organisms are uniformly the product of the lower, 
not the lower of the higher. 

We have encountered the substance of this objec- 
tion at a previous stage of our argument ; and we 
will say here, as there, that it rests upon an imprac- 
ticably narrow view of the problem. It has force 
only when we confine our attention to the one cycle 
of evolution that is made known to us in organic 
life. We have seen that cosmic evolution presents 
itself to us simply as a succession of connected cy- 
cles, to which there is no conceivable beginning or 
ending. But now let us observe that the phenomena 
of organic life present us with an additional thought. 
Instead of a mere succession of cycles, we have a 
gradation, — cycle within cycle. This comes to our 
relief when we try to form a conception of the uni- 
verse as an organic whole. 

It is clearly out of the question, when using the 



308 WHAT IS REALITY? 

microcosm of the ego for the interpretation of the 
cosmos, to make any use of the history of the becom- 
ing of the ego. As a created being, the fruit of a 
process, it can give us no help for the solution of the 
world problem. We must be content to regard it 
only in its supreme and final aspect. We must see 
in it only the container, the ruler, the creator. We 
postulate from the start that there is a real unity to 
the cosmos ; and our quest has been to find some 
reality that shall stand as a symbol of, and a voucher 
in experience for, this conception. Such a reality 
must of necessity be itself the reverse of final, the 
reverse of absolute. It must be a part, an included 
member, of the great whole. But its relations to 
that portion of the great whole which it includes and 
dominates may be used analogically to give us a 
knowledge of the final, absolute being that includes 
all beings and all cycles. 

We have already considered some of these rela- 
tions, and have seen that the ego, when once installed 
in its realm, becomes the author of processes of evo- 
lution that bear a most marked resemblance to the 
great one that we study in nature. We have seen 
that, in every department, it has from the simplest 
beginnings elaborated the most complexly organized 
results by means of successive modifications. We 
know that to each one of these departments the ego 
has come with an already developed intelligence, and 
with a consciousness of certain ends to be attained. 
Why, then, should we not postulate a being that has 
come to the creation of the whole protoplasmic order 
in the same way, — a being who is as much greater 



CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE. 309 

than that order as man is greater than any of the 
particular ideas that he develops ? 

Science is never weary of reminding us that the 
universe is a homogeneous whole, — that the very 
same elements underlie all its different manifesta- 
tions. Is it, then, likely that the supreme reality of 
the world, intelligence, is confined to such an insig- 
nificant part of it as the protoplasmic order of our 
planet ? Is it not far more reasonable to think of 
that order as related to the fullness of the supreme 
intelligence somewhat as a particular science or art 
is related to the sum of man's intelligence ? We 
know that there is a very real cosmos outside of 
what we call the animated world. We know, more- 
over, that there are myriads of worlds in which the 
protoplasmic order can have no existence. Why 
should we not believe that the same mind that has 
expressed itself, on our planet, in the forms of the 
animal and vegetable creation has had innumerable 
other developments antecedent to and contemporary 
with this one ? 

But again, our analogy may be attacked from a 
different quarter. It may be said that it is degrad- 
ing to our thought of the Creator, since it carries 
with it the inference that the Almighty employs the 
same laborious, tentative methods that characterize 
man's constructive efforts. It certainly does carry 
this inference ; but before we decide that such a con- 
ception is degrading to our theism, would it not be 
best to look the facts of creation squarely in the 
face, and ask whether or no they indorse the infer- 
ence ? If there is any truth in evolution, the whole 



310 WHAT IS REALITY? 

history of the world proclaims a Creator who com- 
passes his ends by gradual approaches, in very much 
the same manner that man compasses his. 

There is at every stage the same appearance of 
wow-finality. One form seems to have led up to an- 
other form higher in the scale. There is just the 
same suggestion of improvement, of the abandon- 
ment of simple adjustments, for those that by their 
elaborateness make possible a fuller, more extended 
life ; and each stage in the process makes those an- 
tecedent to it look, in some respects, inferior. When, 
therefore, we turn from contemplating the succession 
of forms in nature to examine the history of the 
growth of any human science or art, we cannot but 
feel that we are looking upon the same thing on a 
smaller scale. In both cases the stages of progress 
present the appearance of having been thought out 
consecutively. 

In the preceding number of this series we had oc- 
casion to show how the history of man-made mechan- 
ism could be set forth as an evolutional process. 
We saw that, if human machines are classified in the 
order of their complexity, this series will correspond 
in its successive stages very closely to the stages of 
another series made by arranging machines in the 
order of time. The simplest were the first to appear, 
then those that were a little less simple, then those 
that were somewhat complex, and so on. That is, 
human creative skill has given rise to a series of 
graduated forms that seems to be the parallel of the 
great series that we find in nature. Now if, because 
of this similarity, we can logically infer that both 



CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE. 311 

series are the outcome of intelligence, are we at lib- 
erty to ignore the fact that the intelligence that has 
wrought in the one case appears to have pursued 
precisely the same methods that it has pursued in 
the other ? 

As to the feeling that such a conception of the 
Creator is less noble than the traditional one, I will 
only say that it seems to me wiser, as well as more 
respectful, to frame our thoughts of the Supreme 
Being upon that which He has revealed of himself 
in his works, than to frame them upon any flights of 
fancy, the outcome of our notions of what ought to 
be. We are not required to postulate a Creator who 
is limited in all respects as we are. The universe, 
even as known to us, proclaims a Being whose fore- 
sight, wisdom, and power are infinite as compared 
with ours. But the study of his methods indicates 
that He is limited in some way. It may be by the 
nature of the ends for which He creates. It may 
be by the means which He employs. It may be by 
both. 

Nor does such a conception seem to me to antago- 
nize the view of God that is given in the Hebrew 
Scriptures. If we derive that view, not from iso- 
lated expressions that appear in the exalted phrase- 
ology of worship, but from the main drift of the 
whole, the testimony of nature is seen to be in pro- 
found harmony with the utterances of inspired men. 
From the beginning of the Bible to the end of it, 
the Almighty is represented as engaged in a great 
conflict with powers that tend to thwart Him, — 
powers that He does not annihilate, but that He 



312 WHAT IS REALITY t 

overcomes through a long-drawn-out historical pro- 
cess. 

The reverse of this conception, a purely imagi- 
native one, has proved for some minds a serious 
hindrance to belief. One of the great obstacles to 
the recognition of an overruling, modifying intel- 
ligence in nature has been the supposed necessity 
of referring everything, if anything, to the intelli- 
gence and will of the Supreme Being. Mr. Dar- 
win found himself at times powerfully impelled to 
recognize the agency of an intelligent mind in the 
adaptations that were apprehended by him with a 
clearness that has been possible to few men. Yet 
he was deterred from yielding to this evidence be- 
cause he could not believe that some things were 
designed and others not. But in the light of our 
analogy, such an objection disappears altogether. 
Man, at the centre of a very limited world, de- 
signedly shapes much of his life ; but the bulk of it 
is not the result of his thought. The order of na- 
ture — the working-out of the lives of all the lesser 
intelligences in their semi-independence — consti- 
tutes the great volume of the stream of being that 
flows through him and around him. May we not, 
in like manner, believe that the intelligence that is 
above ours makes modifications at innumerable 
points, while leaving most of the details of the great 
conflict to be determined by those whose lesser in- 
telligence has been given them for that very pur- 
pose ? 

Our analogy does not encourage us to trace all 
the vicissitudes of creatures, their failures and their 



CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE. 313 

successes, their deteriorations and their gradual ad- 
vances in prosperity, to the direct agency of a su- 
perior being. The working-out of its own salvation 
by each creature seems to be a part of the plan. 
But, on the other hand, we are not warranted in ex- 
cluding this direct agency from any part. We can- 
not say with any certainty that it is manifesting 
itself at this point or at that point. Much less can 
we be sure that it is absent wherever its traces are 
not apparent to us. 

Let us observe, moreover, that this view of a 
supreme power that is restrained, or that restrains 
itself, does not in any way conflict with the thought 
of a Being whose knowledge is unlimited, whose 
consciousness is coextensive with the universe of 
which He is the centre. But, at the same time, we 
are not permitted to treat this last conception as 
one that is necessarily true. A study of the same 
phenomena, by which we have been led to the 
thought of a being who works directly only here 
and there in the process, has led others to the 
thought of a being or beings whose intelligence, 
though unquestionable, is wholly without conscious- 
ness. We shall examine this hypothesis in the next 
chapter. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 

The phrase unconscious intelligence, as applied 
to creative skill, is one that looks very much like 
a contradiction in terms ; yet it has played a con- 
spicuous part in the philosophy of our day, and can- 
not be ignored in a discussion like the present. 
Not that I have any wish to ignore it. On the 
contrary, the view of the world, of which it is in 
part the expression, seems to me to have contrib- 
uted, in no small degree, to the building up of a 
real theism. It has been useful in somewhat the 
same way that smoked glass is useful when we are 
looking at the sun. It has enabled philosophers to 
construct a natural theology with a calmness that is 
generally supposed to be impossible to the advocates 
of a personal, self-conscious Deity ; and the results 
reached are in no whit less valuable because un- 
known quantities have been employed in working 
out the problem. 

Meaningless as the phrase above mentioned ap- 
pears to be, it unquestionably has a meaning for 
those who make use of it. Its very incoherence 
points to some deadlock in thought, some apparent 
contradictoriness in facts, that tempts to a contra- 
diction in terms for its expression. In the preced- 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 315 

ing chapter we examined at some length a class of 
phenomena that seemed to be the exhibition of the 
fruits of intelligence in the absence of intelligence. 
Instinct, we said, has all the appearance of the out- 
come of a well-known process, minus the process. 
We saw, also, that the same appearance attaches to 
every important organic change that is seen to be 
in the direction of improvement. When an animal 
becomes possessed of new and elaborate adaptations 
that make it and its descendants better able to cope 
with the exigencies of life, there is a strong sug- 
gestion of intelligence somewhere, but it is impos- 
sible to discover in the immediate factors any sub- 
ject to whom the intelligence can be referred. 

As an explanation of this difficulty, the hypothe- 
sis which we are about to examine assumes that 
there are two kinds of intelligence, and that the 
whole cause of our mystification is to be traced to 
the circumstance that we have not been trained to 
the recognition of one of these kinds. 

However impossible the idea of unconscious intel- 
ligence may at first seem, we are obliged, it is said, 
when we study the phenomena of our own minds, to 
admit that it must be not only a reality, but that it 
must be a much more common and potent factor 
in our history than conscious intelligence. Our 
primary perceptions, for instance ; how is it possible 
to account for these without postulating a process 
of unconscious reasoning ? We do not ordinarily 
refer them to such a process, because they seem to 
us to be the simple, direct communications of the 
external world to our minds. 



316 WHAT IS BEALITY? 

We open our eyes and knowledge flows in. 
There is no suggestion in this experience of an 
elaborate antecedent process. But none the less is 
it certain that every one of our perceptions is a 
composite product that has been reached, first, 
through nerve processes, and, second, through sensa- 
tions. And, furthermore, it is certain that some- 
thing — some transforming and coordinating power 
— has wrought these many nerve processes and 
sensations into the unity that we call a perception. 
This unity is of a psychic nature. It is a judg- 
ment, a conclusion. How has it been reached ? By 
what means have these nerve processes been wrought 
into sensations, and these sensations again into 
those perceptions that constitute the ready-made and 
apparently simple elements of our conscious men- 
tality ? 

There is, it is urged, but one way known to us by 
which such results can be reached ; the way, that is, 
by which still higher results are attained in con- 
scious mental processes. In the realm of the con- 
scious, a conclusion is always the product of many 
independent perceptions that have been fused into 
unity by a process of reasoning. This is the one 
and only known form of mental activity by which 
such unity can be reached. When, therefore, we 
have, in what we call a simple perception, such a 
unity presented to us, we must conclude that it 
has been elaborated by a process of reasoning that 
has not entered into our consciousness, — a pro- 
cess that may therefore be called unconscious rea- 
soning. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 317 

Again, it is said, we every day compass the ends 
of life by activities that involve a great multitude of 
adjustments that do not enter into consciousness. 
We can neither walk nor eat nor speak without 
making innumerable intelligently adapted move- 
ments to meet the ever-varying demands of life ; yet 
the greater part of these are made without our be- 
stowing a thought upon them. Unconscious adap- 
tation, therefore, is an unquestionable reality of our 
experience. 

And again, all thinkers are familiar with a class 
of phenomena to which the name of unconscious 
cerebration has been given. The thoughts that 
would not arrange themselves satisfactorily yester- 
day, no matter how variously we changed their rela- 
tions to each other, are, after an interval of complete 
oblivion of their relations, revealed to our conscious- 
ness perfectly organized. What has brought about 
this result, if not an unconscious continuation of the 
mental effort that we were previously carrying on 
consciously ? 

Who can say that these are not all of them well- 
known phenomena, and that the inference deduced 
is not a natural and reasonable one ? We certainly 
do not question the truth of the representations ; 
but as to the inference, we have to say, first, that it 
rests upon a most unnecessary assumption ; namely, 
the assumption that the intelligence that is outside 
of my consciousness at a given time is and always 
has been outside of all consciousness. This, I say, 
is an unnecessary assumption in view of the fact 
that we are not isolated, independent beings, but ex- 



318 WHAT IS REALITY? 

ceedingly dependent beings, whose intelligence and 
consciousness is, in every case, intimately bound up 
with that of other existences. The present self- 
consciousness of each individual is, indeed, a thing 
absolutely shut up to itself. But it is continually 
penetrated by results that have been elaborated else- 
where, — sometimes in its own past states of con- 
sciousness, sometimes in the consciousness of other 
beings. 

In view of these considerations, we are certainly 
justified in making the hypothesis that all the phe- 
nomena that are properly referred to intelligence as 
their cause may be accounted for as the results of 
the conscious intelligence of some being. 

In the preceding chapter we gave at some length 
our reasons for believing that much of the appear- 
ance of intelligence in the phenomena of instinct is 
due to the existence of organized nerve substance ; 
and further, that the organization of this was effected 
by intelligence at various epochs in the past history 
of the race. The same reasons lead us to a similar 
belief with regard to those perceptions that we have 
been considering. They are the outcome of nerve 
combinations that were at some time created by con- 
scious intelligence. Every child comes into the 
world with a most elaborately organized brain. It 
is ready to respond in a great variety of special ways 
to the stimuli that are sure to come to it from the 
external world ; and the first result that reaches the 
child's consciousness is, though an exceedingly com- 
posite thing, at the same time a unity, — a unity 
that has been reached, not by any process of uncon- 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 319 

scious reasoning, but by virtue of the congenital or- 
ganization of the brain. 1 

This congenital organization we will for the pres- 
ent regard as the product of a totally unknown 
cause ; and if organization never advanced beyond 
this point, we should have no special clue to its 
cause. But it does not stop here. The first sensa- 
tion of an infant leaves a permanent impress upon 
its brain ; and every succeeding sensation modifies 
it still further. At first these inflowing sensations 
seem to arrange themselves in some sort without any 
assistance from the subject of them. But ere long 
the legitimate ruler of the brain, the ego, begins to 
take an active part in the work. As a conscious, 
intelligent agent it discriminates between its sensa- 
tions, it groups them, it analyzes them, it recom- 
bines them ; and many of these critically made com- 
binations become, so to speak, fixtures in the brain. 
That is, they leave a definite organization of cerebral 
elements, — elements that all work together, and 
produce the impression of unity when they become 
active. 

1 " The Jirst sensation which an infant gets is for him the universe. 
And the universe which he later comes to know is nothing 1 but an am- 
plification and an implication of that first simple germ which, hy ac- 
cretion on the one hand and intussusception on the other, has gTown 
so big and complex and articulate that its first estate is unremem- 
berable. In his dumb awakening of something there, a mere this as 
yet (or something for which even the term this would be perhaps 
too discriminative, and the intellectual acknowledgment of which 
would be better expressed by the bare interjection 'lo ! ' ), the in- 
fant encounters an object in which (though it be given in a pure 
sensation) all the categories of the understanding are contained. 
It has objectivity, unity, substantiality, causality, in the full sense in 
which any later object or system of objects has these things. 17 — Pro- 
fessor William James, The Principles of Psychology, vol. ii. p. 8. 



320 WHAT IS BEALITY? 

It may seem to the reader that we are assuming 
a great deal when we refer the origin of these fix- 
tures to the conscious intelligence of the ego, since 
by far the greater part of the cerebral adjustments 
by which we live have been made so early in life that 
we have no remembrance of them. But the assump- 
tion seems less when we consider that the process by 
which these earlier combinations have been formed 
is very clearly revealed to us in the new combina- 
tions that we are obliged to make in adult life as 
often as we encounter absolutely new objects. 

I go into the house of a friend, we will say, and 
see on the table an object the like of which I have 
never seen before. It looks at a little distance like 
some kind of fruit. But none of my brain combi- 
nations that relate to particular kinds of fruit will 
have anything to do with it. They fling back the 
whole responsibility of the unfamiliar object upon 
me, the ego. Unless I am satisfied to remain in 
ignorance, it is necessary for me to do some intelli- 
gent work. I ask the question that in my childhood 
was so often on my tongue, " What is it ? " I am 
told that it is a persimmon. If I never know any- 
thing more about it than this, I have gained a new 
brain combination ; for in the future, whenever the 
word persimmon is mentioned, the picture of this 
object lying on the table will come into my mind. 
But if I am permitted to carry my investigations 
further, to take this new fruit into my hand, I shall 
discover whether it is light or heavy, rough or 
smooth, rigid or yielding to the touch. If I may 
open it, I shall become possessed of another large 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 321 

class of characteristics ; and if I may taste it, of still 
another. And having got thus far I may go still 
further, to ascertain on what kind of a tree it grew, 
what are the conditions of its fruitage, and so on 
almost without limit. 

All the time that I have been thus engaged I have 
been constructing in my brain a new set of nerve 
combinations, — new^ but not isolated. No surgical 
operation is required to graft them upon former 
combinations. They are the outgrowth of them. 
My knowledge of fruit in general, and much of my 
knowledge of particular kinds of fruit, have partici- 
pated in my construction of the persimmon annex ; 
and this, when completed, is not simply an extension 
of my former knowledge, but an organic part of it. 
I shall never have to do this work over again. The 
sight of a persimmon, or simply the repetition of 
the word, will bring back the whole train of charac- 
teristics in what seems to be a single perception; 
and that without any conscious reasoning on my 
part. Subordinate agents, with intelligence and con- 
sciousness of a kind very different from mine, stand 
ready, trained and waiting, to do that work for me. 

The second class of phenomena, mentioned as 
suggesting unconscious intelligence, yields readily 
to the same explanation. The adjustments which 
are made in the performance of habitual actions 
are the result of the proficiency of trained subordi- 
nate agents. There may be much variety in the 
environment to which the adjustments have to be 
made, without the occurrence of anything absolutely 
new. These educated nerve combinations have had 



322 WHAT IS BEAUTY 1 

to deal with the very same exigencies of a varied 
environment many times before. The most impor- 
tant and difficult part of their training has been the 
acquisition of the power to respond quickly and 
appropriately to certain requirements that come 
upon them as suddenly as the fire alarm, 

A tennis-player does not go through a process of 
unconscious calculations with regard to the direction 
and velocity of every ball that is shot at him. But 
by long practice he has educated certain of his fac- 
ulties to work together with a quickness and preci- 
sion that would be quite impossible to the ego. In 
the case of a very skillful player, little more is re- 
quired of the ego than the persistent, never-relaxing 
will that shuts out every disturbing influence and 
pours the whole stream of nerve force into particu- 
lar channels, Any calculation of the ego in the 
moment of supreme effort would be the reverse of 
helpful. During the time of their activity, the edu- 
cated servants are as undertaking as the little cam- 
era that comes to us with the assurance, " You press 
the button, we do the rest." And yet there is no 
doubt about the origin of their skill. It has all been 
derived from the consciously made adjustments of 
the intelligent ego. 

But now let us notice the fact that these educated 
servants are not always up to the work required of 
them* The brain cells of the thinker, for instance, 
become weary; their responses to each other's sig- 
nals are not accurate ; they do not make connections 
at the critical moment ; and the ego finds itself 
obliged to relinquish for the present a task which it 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS, 323 

feels that it ought to be able to accomplish. But 
the despair of the night is often followed by a sud- 
den and brilliant success in the morning. After a 
peaceful sleep, the wearied workers of yesterday 
spring to their interrupted task with the vigor of 
youth, they respond with alacrity to the constructive 
efforts of the ego, and the connections that could 
not be reached are now completed as if by magic. 
This, I believe, is a partial explanation of that third 
class of phenomena that we noticed as suggesting 
unconscious intelligence. 

What, then, is our conclusion? We have seen 
that much of the brain organization that serves the 
purposes of intelligence can be traced to the ego, 
in its past states of consciousness and constructive 
effort. But what shall we say of that congenital 
plexus of brain elements upon which, as a founda- 
tion, all this additional work of the ego has been 
built? This question has been somewhat elabo- 
rately considered in the preceding chapter, and we 
need here only refer to the conclusion reached ; 
namely, that the only rational way of dealing with 
this problem is to hold tenaciously to the true cause 
that we have found in that stage of the process that 
comes within the range of our experience, and use 
it analogically for the explanation of that which was 
prior to our experience. We saw that it was im- 
possible to account for the infant brain by the hy- 
pothesis that it represents the organized experience 
of generations of ancestors. We therefore argued 
that we are justified in projecting our discovered 
cause into a higher sphere, — of postulating a supe- 



324 WHAT IS REALITY t 

rior intelligent being with whom we are organically- 
connected, somewhat as the subordinate agents of 
the ego are connected with it. To this source also 
we must refer the unexplained part of " unconscious 
cerebration." The struggling ego is visited and 
assisted, at times, by the same Intelligence that in 
the beginning — at the origination of the species — 
girded it for the battle of life. 

Returning now to the hypothesis of unconscious 
intelligence, how does the case stand ? Shall we say, 
here are two explanations, either of which accounts 
for the phenomena under consideration ; and of 
these we are at liberty to take the one that seems 
the least improbable ? I would not put it in this 
way. For I am convinced that the unconscious in- 
telligence hypothesis is no explanation at all. It is 
not simply improbable ; it is, just as it seemed to 
us at the beginning, a contradiction in terms. This 
is, I know, a mere assertion, and over against it 
may be put the assertions of those to whom uncon- 
scious intelligence is a positive reality. Is there 
anything more to be said ? There certainly is, for 
we have the privilege of cross-questioning. The 
advocates of this hypothesis have made various ap- 
plications of it, and told us many things about it. 
And I propose to the reader an examination of this 
testimony, feeling pretty sure that it will aid us 
materially in making up our minds whether uncon- 
scious intelligence is a reality, or a mere juggle of 
words by means of which those who use them un- 
consciously deceive themselves. 

There have been two quite distinct applications of 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 325 

this philosophy. On the one hand is that hypothesis 
which locates the intelligence in the creature ; and 
on the other, that which postulates an all-comprehen- 
sive existence, or being, who, though unconscious, is 
unlimited in wisdom and creative power. 

A prominent advocate of the former is Mr. J. J. 
Murphy. Let us see what kind of an intelligence 
it is that he believes animals very low in the scale 
to be possessed of. It is an intelligence which is 
in one sense theirs, but in another sense not theirs, 
for they know nothing about it. It works quite 
independently of their understanding and volition. 
They have no more part in it than we have in the 
determination of our stature or the color of our 
hair. "The unconscious intelligence that guides 
the bee in building its cell is the same in kind with 
the unconscious intelligence that determines the 
formation of its mouth and its eyes." 1 But how is 
this kind of intelligence related to that which usu- 
ally bears the name ? We are simply told that it 
is the very same. " The intelligence that forms the 
lenses of the eye is the same as that which in the 
mind of man has discovered the theory of the lens. 
The intelligence that hollows out the bones and 
wing-feathers of the bird in order to combine light- 
ness with strength, and places the feathery fringes 
where they are needed for the purposes of flight, is 
the same which in the mind of the engineer has de- 
vised the construction of iron pillars hollowed out 
like those bones and feathers." 2 

We can readily assimilate the idea that the intelli- 
1 Habit and Intelligence, p. 405. 2 Ibid., p. 411. 



326 WHAT IS REALITY* 

gence is the same ; but we should be glad to know 
on what ground it is affirmed that it is ever uncon- 
scious. Our observation of animals tells us that 
their intelligence is far more limited — less discur- 
sive, to use Mr. Lewes's phrase — than that of man. 
But we certainly have every reason to believe that 
they are conscious, and intensely conscious within a 
certain range. Why, then, if the intelligence that 
guides the bee in building its cell is the same as 
that which guides man, should we say that in the 
case of the bee it is unconscious? Mr. Murphy 
says : " These insects, in building their hexagonal 
cells, are manifestly guided by intelligence of some 
kind; but it is not conscious intelligence, for we 
cannot think that they have any conscious know- 
ledge of those properties of the hexagon which 
make that form most suitable to their purposes." 
Again, we ask, why not ? If they have knowledge, 
why not conscious knowledge ? 

The only reason for denying consciousness seems 
to me to be that thereby the imagination is helped 
over a great difficulty. But what is the nature of 
the relief thus obtained ? It is simply that which 
results from skillfully combining in a phrase the 
affirmation and denial of a given proposition. All 
the intelligence that is in this case predicated of the 
bee is denied in the qualifying word unconscious. 
By using two words for the idea under considera- 
tion, the true nature of the combination is obscured. 
But all that the judgment really assents to is that 
the creatures in question are possessed of an unin- 
telligent kind of intelligence. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 327 

But, it may be responded, if this is the true diag- 
nosis of the case, — if there is nothing more in the 
phrase unconscious intelligence than a contradiction 
of terms, — might we not reasonably expect that to 
some other philosopher it would seem better to use 
the words of our phrase in the reverse order, — to 
ascribe, that is, the origin of instincts and organs 
to unintelligent consciousness ? This is certainly 
a reasonable suggestion. Such a philosopher we 
might expect to find, and such an one we actually 
do find. 

The necessity of resorting to some non-mechani- 
cal principle to account for the adaptations that ap- 
pear in nature is thus expressed by Dr. E. D. Cope : 
"It is evident that growth force is not concentric 
nor polar in its activity as are the physical forces, 
and that its determinations are antagonistic to these. 
Its existence in the earth has been a succession of 
conquests over polar force." x And, again : " The 
variations from which natural selection has derived 
the persistent types of life have not been general or 
very extensive. They have been in a limited num- 
ber of directions, and the most of these have been 
toward the increase in perfection of some machine. 
They bear the impress of the presence of an ade- 
quate originating cause directed to a special end." 2 
This cause can be no other than mind. " We are,*' 
he says, " led to the conclusion that evolution is an 
outgrowth of mind, and that mind is the parent of 
the forms of living nature." 3 But feeling it neces- 

1 Origin of the Fittest, p. 398. 2 Ibid., p. 40S. 

8 Ibid., p. 230. 



328 WHAT IS BEALITYf 

sary to reconcile this belief with " the evolutionary- 
hypothesis that mind is the product and highest 
development of the universe of matter and force," 
he hastens to explain that, " by mind, as the author 
of the organic world, I mean only the two elements, 
consciousness and memory" 

Of these two elements, consciousness is always 
the responsible partner. Memory only registers the 
experiences that are supplied to it. Consciousness 
does all the rest. It feels the pressure of environ- 
ment, it recognizes the want that bars the way to 
organic progress, and it invents the new adjustments 
that will meet this want. Consciousness is, in short, 
at all points, the great originator and organizer. It 
has operated from the very beginning of organic 
life. It is not simply a property of protoplasm ; it 
is not, in the last analysis, a property of anything. 
It is not even a product. " The nature of con- 
sciousness is such as to distinguish it from all other 
thinkable things, and it must be ranged with mat- 
ter and force as the third element of the universe." x 

As thus described, consciousness is clearly synon- 
ymous with mind. Why, then, should we not call 
it mind and done with it? Simply because we can- 
not conjure with the word mind as we can with 
the word consciousness. Like the ogre of " Puss in 
Boots," consciousness can change itself into small- 
est of small entities, and quite disappear from our 
view. Thus Dr. Cope tells us that when he speaks 
of consciousness as modifying movement and move- 
ment as modifying structure, he uses the word " in 

1 Origin of the Fittest, p. 230. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 329 

its simplest sense as synonymous with physical sensi- 
bility. Its lowest and most usual exhibition is the 
sense of touch ; the special senses, taste, sight, etc., 
are higher forms, while thoughts and desires are 
the organized products of the same raw material." x 

But we cannot pass over the fact that some of 
the most important — we had almost said intelli- 
gent — adjustments of consciousness have to be 
made when it is at its lowest stage. Dr. Cope has 
fully illustrated, and as we believe, very justly em- 
phasized, the principle that the origin of all new or- 
gans and forms is to be looked for in unspecialized 
material. That is, where consciousness is at its 
simplest, where it is just physical sensibility and 
nothing more, there it is found to be most actively 
and skillfully at work, taking its first and most dif- 
ficult steps. In other words, we find unintelligent 
consciousness performing for Dr. Cope just the 
same wonders that unconscious intelligence per- 
formed for Mr. Murphy. 

This same method — the method of separating 
mind into its conceptual elements, and using one or 
two of these as if they were the whole — has been 
adopted by some eminent writers of whom we should 
never have expected it. 

Thus Haeckel, at the conclusion of an argument 
which he regards as a complete demonstration of 
the truth of the mechanical hypothesis, tells us that 
memory and the power of perception are the chief 
factors in the development of organisms. " He- 
redity," he says, " is the memory of plastidules 
1 Origin of the Fittest, p. 229. 



330 WHAT IS BEALITY? 

(organic molecules), variability their power of per- 
ception. The one brings about the constancy, and 
the other the diversity of organic forms. In the 
very simple and persistent forms of life the plasti- 
dules have, so to speak, learned nothing and for- 
gotten nothing. In highly perfected and variable 
organisms the plastidules have both learned and for- 
gotten much." 1 It is clear that perception, in this 
scheme, accomplishes just as much as intelligence 
does in any other part of the universe. But it is 
somehow much easier to believe that organic mole- 
cules are endowed with unconscious perception and 
unconscious memory than to believe them possessed 
of conscious mind. 

It may seem to the reader that we have dwelt 
quite long enough on this aspect of the subject. 
But we must entreat his patience. The idea of un- 
conscious creation has been exploited in many ways ; 
and we have not yet considered that development of 
it that has made the greatest mark and secured the 
largest number of adherents. 

Edward von Hartmann's philosophy differs radi- 
cally from the above schemes, in that it postulates 
an unconscious intelligence that is all-pervasive. It 
is essentially pantheistic. He himself has said that 
it is " the elevation of Hegel's unconscious philoso- 
phy of the unconscious into a conscious one." In it 
all the phenomena that we have been considering are 
referred, not to the unconscious intelligence of ani- 
mals or molecules, but to the unlimited clairvoyance 
of an all-comprehensive existence, — " The All-One." 
i Quoted by W. K. Brooks, Heredity, p. 37. 



r THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 331 

The unerring skill of the All-One has elaborated 
the adapted forms of the natural world in absolute 
unconsciousness, with the exception of that limited 
and very imperfect consciousness that appears in 
men and animals. It is to this system of philosophy 
that I referred when, at the beginning of the chap- 
ter, I ventured the opinion that the idea of uncon- 
scious creation had contributed in no small degree 
to the building up of a speculative theism. And 
I will say further, that it seems to me impossible for 
any reader of Hartmann's persuasive pages to doubt 
that he has grasped a unifying principle, which 
he has elucidated with much force and ingenuity ; 
though it is not at all so certain that this principle 
is the one which he emphasizes. He has called his 
scheme The Philosophy ©f the Unconscious. But, 
in what follows, I shall try to show that its whole 
strength is owing to the fact that it is the Philoso- 
phy of the Intelligent. 

From beginning to end, it rests upon the follow- 
ing thesis : An intelligence ichich is not the intelli- 
gence of the creature is everywhere at work in the 
world. 

The evidence adduced to establish this main prop- 
osition is drawn from almost every department of 
our experience. He finds it in human history, he 
finds it in the development of the individual, he finds 
it in all the phenomena of growth, and in the routine 
life of our unconsciously performed bodily functions. 
The reparative power of nature is clearly intelligent. 
When the mutilated polyp reproduces its tentacles ; 
when the decapitated worm forms a new head ; when 



332 WHAT IS REALITY ? 

the hydra, cut into many pieces, develops a new 
whole from each fragment ; and when the human 
organism makes all those complicated modifications 
of its functions which result in the healing of a 
wound, — it is the manifestation of an adaptive 
wisdom that is ready and active at innumerable 
points. It is a wisdom that reveals itself, first, as 
a " clairvoyance," a prevision of wants to be met ; 
and, second, as an amazing ingenuity in the means 
selected to meet them. 

To show how impossible it is to avoid the con- 
clusion that instincts are the expression of intuitive 
knowledge, Hartmann refers to that class in which 
the working out of a most elaborate plan, through 
instinctive action, is shared by a number of indi- 
viduals, each one of whom contributes a different 
kind of work. Thus, when bees build a new comb, 
one kind of operation succeeds another with a regu- 
larity and fidelity to plan that would do credit to 
the most disciplined and foreseeing man. Work- 
ers, having different duties to discharge, succeed 
each other, or work on opposite sides of the cells 
performing parts which are complemental to each 
other. Each individual knows when to participate 
and just what to do ; and the value of the work is 
conditioned upon the consentaneous cooperation of 
all engaged in it. As Hartmann remarks : " It is 
as if an invisible supreme architect had laid before 
the assembly the plan of the whole, and impressed it 
upon each individual, — as if every kind of laborer 
had learnt his destined work, place, and order of 
affording relief, and was informed by some signal 
of the moment when his turn came." 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 333 

As equally convincing of clairvoyance and skill, 
lie instances the purposive transformations that suc- 
ceed each other when the embryo passes from its 
unicellular form by innumerable stages into the 
complex organism of a higher animal. Each stage 
is in this case the preparation for and necessary 
condition of all the stages that are to come after it ; 
and each organ is developed earlier in the foetal life 
than it enters into use. 

All these phenomena, he argues, point not to dif- 
ferent intelligences, but to one and the same intel- 
ligence working under different conditions. The 
marvels of creative activity in the foetus, the adaptive 
energy that appears in the recuperative power of 
nature, and the mysterious intelligence that guides 
the creature in its relations to its external environ- 
ment, are all related to each other. There may, in- 
deed, be a diversity of consciousness. That is, there 
may be in each creature, in each ganglion and in 
each cell, a specific consciousness corresponding to 
its specific functions. Instinct, as the willing of 
means, may be the conscious act of the organism as 
a whole, or the act of a lower nerve centre, or even 
of a cell. But these all point more or less directly 
to a supreme wisdom that has an absolute know- 
ledge of means and ends, — a wisdom that " never 
errs" and "never hesitates," that "never falls ill," 
and is " never weary." 

Up to this point, it will certainly not be difficult 
for any theist to agree with Hartmann. But now we 
have to inquire why he finds it necessary to affirm 
that the author of all these wonderful adaptations 
is unconscious. 



834 WHAT IS REALITY* 

His reason is twofold. In the first place, from 
a physical point of view, there is no evidence — ■ 
no analogical probability — - of consciousness in the 
All-One ; and, in the second place, from a meta- 
physical point of view, it is inconceivable. Con- 
sciousness is dependent upon organization. The 
self-conscious mind of man is a product that has 
been slowly reached through a gradual development 
from the simplest forms of protoplasm. What 
vague beginnings of consciousness may exist in the 
polyp, or the ainceba, or the plant, we know not. 
But we know that this quality of mind becomes a 
more and more certain and conspicuous concomitant 
of living beings as their organization becomes more 
complex. And if, inverting the process, we descend 
the scale from one grade to another, the evidence of 
consciousness gradually fades till we finally reach 
the unconscious. " With the complete abolition of 
the cerebral function," Hartmann says, " the activ- 
ity of consciousness is likewise abolished." 

This is not the first time we have met this argu- 
ment in the course of our discussion. But in the 
former case it was made use of by Mr. Lewes to 
prove the impossibility of an anima mundi. It is 
certainly clear that if it is fatal to the existence of 
consciousness beyond the limits of protoplasm, it is 
equally fatal to the existence of intelligence under 
the same circumstances. Our reasons for thinking 
it fatal to neither have been given elsewhere. 

At one point in his argument, Hartmann seems to 
be aware that his position with regard to this matter 
is not quite satisfactory. He says this question may 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 385 

very properly be asked : u Admitting that the ac- 
tions of the All-One displayed in the individual are 
unconscious, so far as the individual is concerned, 
what is the proof that they are not conscious in the 
All-One itself ? " 1 But all we get for an answer 
is this : the onus prohandi of this proposition rests 
on the maker of it. " It is not," he says, "for me 
to prove that the unconscious physical functions 
may not on the other side be conscious in the All- 
One ; but those who desire to make this addition to 
the hypothesis have to produce the proof of their 
assumption, which until then must be regarded as 
pure assertion, and accordingly to be scientifically 
ignored." 

Well, then, if we must defend our belief in con- 
sciousness, let us find out from Hartmann how to do 
it. Let us see how he establishes that part of his 
philosophy with which we agree. How does lie prove 
that intelligence and will may be predicated of the 
All-One ? If he succeeds in rescuing the ascription 
of these attributes from the category of mere asser- 
tion, there is hope for us. 

That intelligent guidance is the true explanation 
of the organic adaptations of nature commends itself 
to his mind, first, because there is no other way of 
explaining the existence of a progressive employ- 
ment of means to anticipated ends ; and, second, be- 
cause the human mind instinctively jumps to this 
analogy, which in its concrete form is at once intelli- 
gible and satisfactory. This part of his argument 

1 Philosophy of the Unconscious, by Edward von Hartrnann \ trans- 
lated by William Chatterton Coupland, M. A, B. Sc, vol. ii. p. 245. 



336 WHAT IS REALITY* 

takes exactly the same form as that of the theist. 
At all times and among all peoples, he urges, the 
wisdom of the Creator, World-orderer, or World- 
governor has been the theme of admiration and of 
praise, and the greater part of this expression has 
been the announcement of a genuine conviction, — 
a conviction that thrusts itself already on the mind 
of the child as soon as it begins to comprehend the 
remarkable combination of means and ends in na- 
ture. He only who denies natural ends can close 
his mind against this conviction ; and such denial is 
reached only by the substitution of abstractions for 
realities. 1 

Now, is it not true that the unsophisticated mind 
assumes the existence of consciousness in the Su- 
preme Being as naturally as it does the existence of 
intelligence ? and does it not cling as tenaciously 
to the one idea as to the other ? The denial of the 
former is just as much the result of substituting 
abstractions for realities as is the denial of the lat- 
ter. Hartmann himself tells us that the idea of 
unconscious intelligence never occurred to the prim- 
itive understanding, — that even to this day " most 
educated people hold it to be absurd to speak of 
unconscious thinking." 2 

In another connection he tells us that the starting- 
point of his philosophizing is anthropological. In 
fact, he represents this as the only possible starting- 
point. " Only what we are able to understand by 
analogy with ourselves, only that are we able to un- 

1 Philosophy of the Unconscious, vol. ii. p. 356. 

2 Ibid., vol. i. p. 16. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 337 

derstand of the world at large." * If there were, he 
argues, a total want of resemblance between us and 
the rest of the world, all possibility of an under- 
standing of the same would be cut off from us. But 
on the strength of the fact that we are " ourselves a 
piece of the world" and that our anthropological 
functions, like all other phenomena, have grown 
out of the fundamental principles of the world, " we 
may confidently indulge in a cautious use of this 
analogy." 

We might suppose that this method would lead to 
the inclusion of consciousness as an attribute of the 
Supreme Being. But our author tells us that the 
guidance of this analogy is reliable only when we 
proceed critically enough in the separation of those 
peculiarities which distinguish us men from the rest 
of nature. He proceeds critically and strips off con- 
sciousness. Schopenhauer proceeds critically and 
strips off everything except will. Dr. Cope, with a 
like eclecticism, leaves us nothing except conscious- 
ness and memory. Such a result is unsatisfactory ; 
and the only way out of it 4 seems to me to be indi- 
cated by a saying already quoted in these pages, 
to the effect that all philosophies are true in so 
far as they affirm, and false in so far as they deny. 
If we should reverse this proposition there would 
be nothing left of the anthropological argument. 
But holding to it we get the whole benefit of the 
analogy. 

It is as clear to Hartmann as it is to us that any 
stripping off, except his own, weakens if it does not 

1 Philosophy of the Unconscious, vol. iii. p. 144, 



388 WHAT 1& EEALITYf 

invalidate the argument upon which he in the last 
resort bases everything. He points out to us the 
inconsistency of Schopenhauer because he discrimi- 
nates between will and the rest of the mental facul- 
ties. It is altogether inconsequent and one-sided in 
him to hypostatize will as individual metaphysical 
essence while referring the stores of memory, to- 
gether with the intellectual foundations, talents, and 
aptitudes, to the physical constitution of the brain. 
" It is obvious," he remarks, " that the absolutely ir- 
rational (will without intelligence) taken as a prin- 
ciple must be very much poorer, much less fertile, 
than the absolutely rational, the idea and thought." 1 
There can be no question about this. But is it not 
equally clear that if will, idea, and consciousness are 
all retained in our conception of the power that 
works for ends in nature, we have a principle that is 
not only more fertile than Hartmann's, but one that 
is beyond comparison more comprehensible? 

How shall we explain such an exceedingly one- 
sided application of a great principle on the part of 
an author who for the most part reasons so well ? 
The mystery is solved, at least in part, when we dis- 
cover that he everywhere uses the word unconscious 
in a very peculiar sense. This appears clearly when 
he institutes a comparison between theism and his 
conception of the All-One. The advocates of theism, 
he seems to say, have no real ground of controversy 
with him, because the unconsciousness of his clairvoy- 
ant intelligence is not a pure negation, but, on the 
contrary, an unknown and unknowable affirmative. 

1 Philosophy of the Unconscious, vol. iii. p. 150. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 339 

" We are compelled," he says, " to designate this 
intelligence, which is superior to all consciousness, at 
once unconscious and super conscious" x This, he 
protests, does away with all reasonable complaint 
against his philosophy on the part of theists. For, 
to use his own words, " if the All-One, with all its 
unconsciousness, possesses a swperconscious intelli- 
gence, all-knowing and all-wise, which teleologically 
determines the content of creation and of the world 
process, we stand here neither as accidental product 
of the forces of nature, nor is God dwarfed by deny- 
ing Him this mode of consciousness." 2 Is, then, the 
word " unconscious," as applied by Hartmann to the 
All-One, only intended to emphasize the difference 
that must be supposed to exist between the finite, 
limited consciousness of man, and the unlimited, all- 
embracing consciousness of the Supreme Being ? 

There would seem to be no doubt of this when we 
read the following : " If one still, for one moment, 
tried to imagine the impossible demand satisfied that 
consciousness should be preserved as a form of rep- 
resentation, yet this form also would have to be 
taken as infinitely elevated above the consciousness 
known to us. And it would then be at once appar- 
ent that the infinite form is equivalent to pure form- 
lessness, — that the absolute consciousness demanded 
for God must again prove to be identical with the 
absolutely unconscious." To do Hartmann justice, 
it should be said that he advertises the reader of this 
peculiarity of his language at an early stage of his 

1 Philosophy of the Unconscious, vol. ii. p. 249. 

2 Ibid., vol. ii. p. 247. 



340 WLTAT IS REALITY t 

argument. When treating (vol. i. p. 68) of those 
nerve centres in man which seem to be the source 
of complicated automatic action, he says : " The 
cerebral is by no means the sole, but merely the 
highest, consciousness of the animal, — the only one 
which in higher animals attains to self-consciousness, 
therefore the only one which I call my conscious- 
ness. That, however, the subordinate nerve centres 
must also have a consciousness, if of a vaguer de- 
scription, plainly follows from the continuity of the 
animal series, and a comparison of the ganglionic 
consciousness of the invertebrata with that of the in- 
dependent ganglia and central parts of the spinal 
cord of the higher animals." But immediately we 
are warned that this ascription of consciousness to 
subordinate nerve centres is only " provisional," be- 
cause, "compared with the cerebral consciousness 
which a man exclusively recognizes as his conscious- 
ness, it is certainly unconscious, and it is accordingly 
shown that there exists in us an unconscious will, 
since these nerve centres are all contained in our 
corporeal organism, therefore in us." 

It is not, then, with the intention of deceiving us, 
that Hartmann so persistently uses a negative word 
to express that which really stands in his imagina- 
tion for a positive entity. It is that he deceives him- 
self with the conceit that this negative is the deter- 
mining principle of his philosophy. To accommodate 
his own phrase with regard to Hegel, we may say 
that his system is an unconscious philosophy of the 
conscious. I have dwelt upon it because it is an 
argument that approaches the great problem from 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 341 

the side of natural phenomena, because it proceeds 
inductively from the facts of nature, and is pushed 
along natural lines with great persuasiveness and 
wealth of illustration, and because it seems to me to 
outline clearly the general characteristics of a con- 
ception of God's relation to his world to which we 
are forced by the knowledge of a creative process. 

We are not taking an unfair advantage when we 
substitute the author's own phrase superconscious 
for " unconscious " whenever the latter is used with 
reference to the All-One. For although he admits 
it with a protest and declares it to be only provi- 
sional, it is, in fact, of a superconscious intelligence 
that he invariably discourses when he specifies the 
characteristics of the Supreme Being. The All-One, 
he tells us, " employs expedients ; " 1 He " avoids 
difficulties," 2 He " prefers " 3 one method to an- 
other, He " intends" etc. And the fact that we are 
carried by the argument to a conclusion not contem- 
plated or intended by the author, but the reverse of 
that which he set out to prove, does not detract from, 
but greatly enhances, its logical value. It is one 
more illustration of the impossibility of explaining 
the world by abstractions. It is a notable witness 
to the necessity of using an unmutilated anthropo- 
morphism if we avail ourselves in any degree of the 
human microcosm as a symbol of the greater world. 

1 Philosophy of the Unconscious, vol. ii. p. 308. 

2 Ibid., vol. ii. p. 303. 3 Ibid., vol. iii. p. 311. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

OPTIMISM. 

We have reached the conclusion that there is a 
Supreme Being, and that he is the intelligent origi- 
nator and director of the world process. I have 
ventured to say we, for it becomes necessary now to 
assume that the reader stands with the author on 
this fundamental postulate of theism. But we have 
not even time to take breath on this eminence that 
from afar looked like a resting-place. 

It is not that the result reached contains less than 
we had imagined, but that it contains so much 
more. It opens before us, not only the possibilities 
that were the incentive of our effort, but other pos- 
sibilities to which, in the ardor of pursuit, we had 
hardly given a thought. In other words, there is 
no lack of evidence in nature of purposive intelli- 
gence, but there is so much of it as to be embarrass- 
ing. No sooner do we turn from the contemplation 
of the idea of design, in the abstract, to the exami- 
nation of its concrete instances, than our hypothesis 
of one planning intelligence is well-nigh swamped. 
From every side there pours in such a multitude 
of special adaptations to special ends that we are 
sorely puzzled to discern anything like unity of pur- 
pose in them. What we seem to see is a great con- 
flict of innumerable intelligences and wills. 



OPTIMISM. 343 

So long as we confined our attention to a general 
survey of nature we were not impressed by this 
aspect of it. There was no lack of prosperity and 
joyousness in our picture of the world ; and our pre- 
possessions with regard to the goodness of the Cre- 
ator helped us to see in these the abundant evidence 
of his benevolence. 

But we cannot go into particulars without seeing 
things in a very different light. The arrangement 
of it all is so different from what we should have 
expected it to be. Instead of peace and harmony, 
we find that the adjustment of species to species is 
such as not only to admit of, but actually to neces- 
sitate, continual warfare and destruction. All the 
world over, life is perpetuated by the extinction of 
life. There cannot be gain in this quarter without 
loss in some other. The improvement of structure 
that enables one species to cope more successfully 
with environment makes it harder for other species 
to subsist at all. Increase of the means of defense 
or powers of escape granted to this order augments 
the difficulty of procuring food on the part of that 
other order. Additional facilities for the capture 
of prey, while securing prosperity to creature num- 
ber one, make the hazards of life greater for crea- 
ture number two. 

For the sake of clearness, let us take a concrete 
example, — one little episode from the great drama 
that is being constantly enacted around us. I am 
indebted for it to a paper on " The Growth of Jelly- 
Fishes," by Professor W. K. Brooks. 1 

1 Popular Science Monthly, September, 1888. 



344 WHAT IS REALITY? 

On any land-locked and sheltered sea-beach, where the 
waves ripple up on to the sand without breaking, hun- 
dreds of small spiral sea-shells may usually be found in 
the shallows dancing up and down the sand at the waters' 
edge, following the crest of each little wave as it flows up 
and spreads out over the beach, and turning to run back 
with it as it falls ; keeping always just within the water, 
and exhibiting restless activity and agility, quite unlike 
the sluggish habit of the snails which normally inhabit 
the shells. If the loiterer by the waves should be inquisi- 
tive enough to be attracted by them, and should search for 
the meaning of the unusual liveliness of the snails, he 
would find that each shell is inhabited by a hermit-crab, 
that, after devouring the true owner of the house, has 
thrust his own body into it, and carries it about, as a de- 
fense against his many enemies, among whom his most 
pugnacious and cannibal brothers and sisters are perhaps 
the worst. 

The shell of the snail was, we must say, intended 
in the first place to be beneficial to the snail itself ; 
and admirably adapted it was to secure the tranquil 
happiness of its inmate. But on the other hand, 
this arrangement, so advantageous for the snail, 
made it more difficult for a certain active, hard- 
working family of Crustacea to obtain their food. 
But adaptations for the overcoming of difficulties are 
not wanting to them ; murderous instruments have 
been bestowed upon the crab, and these enable it 
to break through the inherited rights of the snail, 
and having put an end to its existence, to apply the 
shell to an entirely different use from that originally 
intended. Now as to design, — does not the triumph 
of the crab seem the direct defeat of the provision 



OPTIMISM. 345 

so elaborately and skillfully made for the well-being 
of the snail ? 

But this is not the end of the history. We cannot 
suspect, from what we know of his nature, that the 
crab has any benevolent ulterior intentions. But 
his crime incidentally secures the welfare of an ex- 
ceedingly interesting colony of microscopic creatures 
that would otherwise find life exceedingly difficult. 

The progenitor of this colony is a minute and 
very helpless animal of simple structure, called a 
planula. It has been hatched from the egg of a 
jelly-fish ; but it is very far from being a jelly-fish 
itself. In fact it can never survive to be anything, 
unless it is so fortunate as to come upon a most ex- 
ceptional combination of circumstances. Its destiny, 
if it is fortunate, is to develop into a whole commu- 
nity of beings, having different forms and functions, 
so united in a single organism that the offices per- 
formed by each member of the community benefit 
all the rest. Only when all the stages of this develop- 
ment have been passed through does it send forth 
a young independent jelly-fish like the one which 
produced the planula. 

As we have already observed, the consummation 
of this cycle depends upon a combination of circum- 
stances that is not easily found. Unless the planula 
very soon after birth comes in contact with some 
solid body upon the bed of the ocean to which it 
can cement itself, it dies. If it attaches itself to an 
unsuitable substance, its death is equally certain. 
Planulas that adhere to living mollusks or to empty 
shells have no chance of survival, for in either case 



346 WHAT IS BEALITY? 

they are subjected to fatally rough usage. But the 
care which a hermit crab takes of himself is just the 
care that the little colony requires. 

As the gentle waves ebb and flow on the shore, he 
follows them back and forth, keeping close to the edge, 
where the food that is washed out of the sand is most 
abundant, and the aeration of the water most perfect. 
As long as the sea is calm, he may be trusted to carry his 
load of hydroids into the places which are most favorable 
for them, and as soon as a storm approaches he trots off 
with his charge to a safe shelter in deeper water and waits 
until it has passed. 

Now, what shall we say of this chain of connected 
events as regards design ? Were all these situations 
designed ? or were none of them designed ? or were 
some designed, and some the result of chance? I 
am sure the latter hypothesis represents the judg- 
ment that would ordinarily be passed upon them. 
From the standpoint of each individual career, the 
organic adaptations that are calculated to insure suc- 
cess in the struggle for existence seem to have been 
invented by some very skillful mind for the accom- 
plishment of this special end. But on the other 
hand, the external conditions that make or mar the 
career of each seem to be fortuitous. In the hy- 
droid colony, the diversity of organization and the 
complicated division of labor specially impress us 
with the necessity of postulating a planning intel- 
ligence; but its perfectly adapted habitat on the 
stolen shell of a rapacious crab seems to be the 
result of chance. 

In short, we can discern no unity of design, but 



OPTIMISM. 347 

rather a conflict of designs suggesting a plurality 
of designers. It is as if each species had attached 
to its special interests a skilled but limited inventor, 
who in each case adapted himself to circumstances 
as well as he could. But how shall we think of 
all these conflicting and mutually destructive design- 
ers as related to a supreme, overruling intelligence ? 

It has seemed to some that if, notwithstanding 
these antagonisms, we persist in assuming an intelli- 
gent Creator, we are forced to think of him as one 
who amuses himself, one who delights in the spec- 
tacle of an infinitely varied conflict, — a conflict 
which tests and develops all the skill and energies 
of his curiously fashioned gladiators. Does not the 
care that protects and continues all these conflicting 
orders resemble the care that such a being would 
take to insure the vigor of the instruments of his 
pleasure? And, further, does not the progressive 
aspect of creation suggest just that craving for 
variety and novelty in entertainment which would 
characterize such a mind ? Does not the history of 
mankind, ever fighting and destroying one another 
for ideals that are never realized, frenzied by en- 
thusiasms that are anon seen to be the outcome of 
illusions, harmonize altogether with such a concep- 
tion? 

With our attention shut up to the one class of 
phenomena under consideration, it is impossible to 
deny that this view of things is legitimately derived 
by reasoning analogically from well-attested facts. 
The imaginations of our Teutonic and Scandinavian 
ancestors were so impressed by these facts that they 



848 WHAT IS REALITY? 

constructed for themselves a religion of which war- 
fare was the central idea. Odin, the creator and 
sustain er of every kind of life, the being who per- 
vades the universe, working in and through all ani- 
mate and inanimate things, is above all else the 
god of battle. 

He is a god who loves virtue and hates iniquity. 
But the virtue that outranks all others is bravery. 
His elect are those who win glory in battle. With 
a special and favoring interest he watches over the 
birth of the hero, superintends his growth, and 
trains him in the use of arms. When he goes forth 
to combat, Odin is still with him inspiring him with 
valor ; and when death at last overtakes him, fight- 
ing with his face to the foe, it is Odin who bears 
him away to the bright Valhalla, into the company 
of all the heroes. And this Valhalla is no haven of 
tranquillity. It is a great and glorious place of war. 
It boasts five hundred and forty gates, through each 
of which eight hundred men can go abreast. There 
the heroes of earthly wars live and surfeit them- 
selves with fighting. They are sometimes killed in 
the fray ; but they revive, and return to shout and 
drink mead with all the gods and heroes. 

We have certainly strayed very far from this 
ideal of our ancestors. Odin is not the god whom 
we worship. We have not, indeed, ceased to admire 
bravery or, when our attention is turned to it, to 
recognize the disciplinary advantages of conflict. 
But a new vision of good has supplanted the old 
one. Our God is " the God of peace and love." 
His heroes are those who forgive their enemies, who 



OPTIMISM. 349 

do g^pd unto all men as they have opportunity, who 
live lives of gentleness and self-effacement. His 
kingdom is a kingdom of peace. The ideal society 
toward which he is leading his creatures is one from 
which violence and all forms of oppression have 
been forever banished by love and mutual helpful- 
ness. 

Now the question for our natural theology to an- 
swer is this, — Does the Scandinavian or the Chris- 
tian ideal find the strongest indorsement in nature ? 
We have already passed in review a class of facts 
that, taken by themselves, pronounce emphatically 
for the religion of our ancestors. Its God is a natu- 
ral if somewhat redundant deduction from these 
facts. Is there any other class of experiences of 
equal significance upon which we can as legitimately 
base our belief in a benevolent and loving God, who 
hates violence, and desires the happiness of all his 
creatures ? 

It is perhaps unnecessary to say that no indorse- 
ment of our ideal is possible unless we repudiate 
the assumption, so often made, that the God of 
Christianity is to be thought of as a Being absolutely 
free from every kind of limitation. If we once ad- 
mit that in order to be orthodox we must affirm 
that the Supreme Being could have attained all the 
ends of creation just as well without conflict, then 
we must admit further that the present order of 
things proves that He loves conflict and violence on 
its own account, and there is nothing more to be 
said. But if we are satisfied to cling to our analogy 
and to postulate a Being who, though infinitely 



850 WHAT IS REALITY t 

greater in all his attributes than man, is yet one 
who, like man, must use means for the attainment 
of his ends, there is much to be said in support of 
the Christian ideal as the true expression of what 
we find in nature. 

It is not hard to understand why conflict should 
appear to all warlike nations the predominant char- 
acteristic of the world. Nor can we wonder that 
this arrangement excited in the worshipers of Odin 
no sentiment of abhorrence. All the virtues most 
highly prized by them were the outcome of war. 
Bravery, endurance, the overcoming of difficulties, 
the enthusiasm and elation that comes from the dis- 
regard of personal safety in the presence of danger, 
— all these qualities were the fruits of war. And 
what could be more natural than for them to wor- 
ship a supreme being who took delight in the com- 
bat, and made provision for it his chief interest? 
Nor, on the other hand, is it difficult to account for 
the very different preeminence that the idea of con- 
flict has assumed in modern thought. 

In our estimate of the forces that control the 
world we are very much at the mercy of currents of 
emotion that by turns sweep over society. A cen- 
tury ago the whole tendency of thought as regards 
nature was optimistic. The wave of sentiment 
that, with the cry Bach to nature, precipitated the 
events of the first French Revolution was not con- 
fined to a few philosophers. Not only in France, 
but throughout cultivated Europe there was a belief 
in the harmony of nature that amounted to halluci- 
nation. The results of the attempted return in 



OPTIMISM. 351 

France did much to dispel this illusion, and the 
study of nature has done still more. The thinking 
world has opened its eyes to the fact that nature is 
throughout a scene of conflict, and that human na- 
ture makes for harmony only in so far as it cultivates 
assiduously one class of impulses, and represses or 
restrains another. 

But when did the human imagination ever do 
things by halves ? We find ourselves to-day in the 
midst of an extreme reaction. We have not simply 
ceased to think of nature as all-harmonious. We 
have almost forgotten that there is any harmony in 
it at all. Thanks to an explanation of the origin 
of forms that makes conflict the great artificer of 
the world, we have got back to the Scandinavian's 
conceptions of its preeminence without being able to 
share his admiration for it. Our theories of what 
ought to be in the best ordered world are almost the 
reverse of his ; and we are tempted to blacken our 
souls with pessimism. But are we any less wild 
in our estimation of the realities of nature than were 
the followers of Rousseau ? Are we any less mor- 
bid than they were giddy? I think not. I am 
confident of it, notwithstanding the prejudice that 
exists in favor of the more depressing view as scien- 
tific. 

What we wish to find out is whether this view 
has been derived from the study of nature as a 
whole, or only from an absorbing study of one side 
of it. Let us first take a look at the animated 
world from the same external point of view that has 
furnished us with the hypothesis of natural selection, 



852 WHAT IS REALITY f 

Some very significant facts that seem almost to 
have escaped the observation of the magnifiers of 
that hypothesis have been recently set forth by a 
writer in the " Nineteenth Century," 2 from whom I 
will make a few quotations. " As soon," he says, 
"as we study animals, — not in laboratories and mu- 
seums only, but in the forest and prairie, in the 
steppe and the mountains, — we at once perceive 
that though there is an immense amount of warfare 
and extermination going on amidst various species, 
and especially amidst various classes, of animals, 
there is, at the same time, as much or perhaps even 
more of mutual support, mutual aid, and mutual de- 
fense amidst animals belonging to the same species, 
or at least to the same society. Sociability is as 
much a law of nature as mutual struggle." 

Speaking of his exploration of the Vitim regions 
in Siberia, in company with another eminent zoolo- 
gist, he says : " We were both under the fresh im- 
pression of the ' Origin of Species,' but we vainly 
looked for the keen competition between animals of 
the same species, which the reading of Darwin's 
work had prepared us to expect. We saw plenty 
of adaptations for struggling, very often in common, 
against the adverse circumstances of climate, or 
against various enemies, . . . but even in the Amur 
and Usuri regions, where animal life swarms in 
abundance, facts of real competition and struggle 
between higher animals of the same species came 
very seldom under our notice, though we eagerly 
searched for them." 

1 P. Kropotkin. 



OPTIMISM. 353 

Speaking of ants, — " that immense division of 
the animal kingdom which embodies more than one 
thousand species, and is so numerous that the Bra- 
zilians pretend that Brazil belongs to the ants, not 
to men," — our author says : " The ant thrives with- 
out having any of the protective features which can- 
not be dispensed with by animals living an isolated 
life. Its color renders it conspicuous to its enemies, 
and the lofty nests of many species are easily seen 
in the meadows and forests. It is not protected by 
a hard carapace ; and its stinging apparatus, how- 
ever dangerous when hundreds of stings are plunged 
into the flesh of an animal, is not of great value for 
individual defense ; while the eggs and larvae of the 
ants are a dainty for a great number of the inhabit- 
ants of the forest." 

On the strength of these considerations, taken in 
connection with what we know of the manner of life 
and of the success of this great family, he ventures 
to affirm that "if we knew no other facts from ani- 
mal life than what we know about the ants and the 
termites, we already might safely conclude that mu- 
tual aid and individual initiative are two factors 
infinitely more important than mutual struggle in 
the evolution of the animal kingdom." 

The same general conclusion was reached by Pro- 
fessor Kessler, the late dean of the St. Petersburg 
University. His expression of it was as follows : 
" I obviously do not deny the struggle for existence, 
but I maintain that the progressive development of 
the animal kingdom, and especially of mankind, is 
favored much more by mutual support than by 



354 WHAT IS REALITY? 

mutual struggle. . . . All organic beings have two 
essential needs, — that of nutrition and that of 
propagating the species. The former brings them 
to a struggle and to mutual extermination, while the 
needs of maintaining the species bring them to ap- 
proach one another and to support one another. 
But I am inclined to think that in the evolution of 
the organic world — in the progressive modification 
of organic beings — mutual support among individ- 
uals plays a much more important part than their 
mutual struggle." 1 

Here, then, are two realities, two principles which 
work side by side, now antagonizing, now supple- 
menting each other. Viewed in this way, simply 
as coexisting forces, they determine nothing with re- 
gard to the character of an assumed creator. The 
combination of animals for mutual support does not 
banish conflict ; nor are the conditions of life so 
adjusted as to lead to the gradual extermination of 
those creatures that do not combine. The spiders, 
though addicted for the most part to solitary living, 
hold their own in every part of the world. The 
power that blesses mutual helpfulness and harmony 
blesses also the unsocial, isolated life that seeks its 
ends through cunning and violence. 

But there is another way of estimating the signifi- 
cance of these two principles. Let us look for a 
moment at their history, — at the part that each has 
played in the great world process. 2 

1 Quoted in the article above mentioned. 

2 For a brief consideration of the part that conflict plays in the 
world, see Appendix B. 



OPTIMISM. 355 

If a study of their history shows that these two 
tendencies have always been as evenly balanced in 
the creation as they seem to be to-day, it might 
be difficult for us to say that one was superior to 
the other in the sense of being more the end of cre- 
ation than the other. But if, on the contrary, we 
find that there has been a continual increase in one 
of them, — a continual triumphing of the one that in 
the beginning was nothing, or next to nothing, over 
the one that from the start was the sole expression 
of the relations of living beings to each other, then 
surely we shall have a good reason for affirming 
that the former represents one of the great ends 
toward which the process moves. 

What we find at the beginning is no mutual sup- 
port. We need not go back to atoms. It will illus- 
trate the principle equally well to begin with uni- 
cellular organisms. These, the first animals, lived 
absolutely separate lives. There was unending re- 
production by a division of the individual organism, 
and unending conflict. But, from this on, the his- 
tory of creation is the record of successive combina- 
tions, each one of which has been a victory over the 
principle of conflict. We have seen how these sim- 
ple primitive organisms are found first combining in 
homogeneous colonies, then in associations of two or 
three classes of members each of which has different 
functions, then in organisms more and more com- 
plex, till we reach those that are composed of mil- 
lions of living creatures having the most diverse 
characteristics. 

This class of facts, while it exhibits the principle 



356 WHAT IS REALITY? 

of combination as progressive, at the same time 
widens immensely our thought of its actual predom- 
inance in the world. After we leave the very sim- 
ple organisms each separate individual that enters 
into conflict with others represents myriads of be- 
ings that are mutually supporting each other. And 
whenever we see one of these complex beings leading 
a more or less isolated life, we have to remember 
that the isolation is that of one contrasted with the 
combination of many. The solitary spider con- 
sciously plotting and ensnaring and killing, for the 
advantage of one, is, without knowing it, securing 
the advantage of a great multitude of diverse beings 
that are united in a perfect organization of mutual 
helpfulness. 

But at this point, some one will be sure to ques- 
tion the use that we have made of the phenomena of 
physical organization. What, it will be asked, is 
there in common between the organically connected 
elements of one of the higher animals, and the 
social combinations that are consciously and vol- 
untarily entered into by human beings who know 
the meaning of mutual aid and of personal sacrifice 
for the general good ? When unicellular organisms 
give rise to multicellular, and these in turn to or- 
ganisms that have many different kinds of cells and 
combinations of cells, there is indeed a resemblance 
to the intelligent combinations of men ; but there 
is no moral quality involved. There is nothing to 
make us think that the cells feel anything like kind- 
ness or good will toward one another, or that they 
have any understanding of the nature of their mu- 



OPTIMISM. 357 

tual helpfulness. What we see is simply the out- 
come of a natural process. 

This is all very true ; but it does not affect the 
point at issue. If the agents of these combinations 
are wholly ignorant of the purposes they serve, it 
becomes all the more necessary to trace them to the 
intelligent beneficence of a Creator who has reached 
this goal as the result of a long process, every step 
of which has been a victory of the principle of mu- 
tual support over the principle of conflict. Through- 
out this process, combination appears as the end to 
be attained. It is the positive, constructive prin- 
ciple, — the principle that makes for improvement, 
for advance in the scale of being. As an irresis- 
tible, always advancing power, it has crowded con- 
flict to the outskirts. It has made ever-widening 
inclosures within which warfare is reduced to a 
minimum. A normal human body is, so far as the 
mutual relations of its many elements are concerned, 
an ideal world. It is a vast organism, each member 
of which, while living its own life, lives it in such 
manner as to minister helpfully to all the lives with 
which it is connected. 

The step from this kind of combination to that 
which is the outcome of voluntary intelligent acts 
does indeed seem a long one. Yet the two are not 
so absolutely separated from each other as they at 
first appear to be. In a community of bees, for 
instance, the individuals are both organically and 
intelligently related to each other. The hive is the 
unit of bee life ; but the separate individuals have a 
large amount of liberty, and the opportunity of ac- 



358 WHAT IS REALITY ? 

quiring a considerable degree of personality. There 
are good bees and bad bees. There are those that 
labor honestly for the welfare of the community, 
and there are robber bees that abandon themselves 
to lives of depredation. The same is true of the 
communities of ants. 

The family relation, the starting-point of the so- 
cial organism, begins in an organic dependence of 
the sexes upon each other and of the offspring upon 
the parent ; but this is superseded by a combina- 
tion that is maintained by intelligence and affec- 
tion. And this, again, by a succession of stages, 
gives rise to the nation. The community of feeling 
and interest that unites the family widens out into 
that of the clan, the tribe, the commonwealth. And 
as we reach this stage of development, there comes 
into view a clearly defined duality in the relations 
that make the individual a part of the community. 
Loyalty to all the members of the tribe centres in 
loyalty to its chief or individual head. Thus we are 
by a natural development carried from a world 
of separation and conflict into full view of the ideal 
that our religion places before us. The nation, how- 
ever imperfect its development, is a symbol and 
at the same time a prophecy of the Kingdom of 
Heaven. 

I say it is a prophecy because we have every rea- 
son to believe that the world process has not ex- 
hausted itself or reached its final goal. The very 
imperfection of the present order suggests further 
development. The social instinct, that in the emo- 
tions of sympathy, kindness, and love craves a more 



OPTIMISM. 359 

perfect realization, shows that we are constitutionally 
fitted for it. The social ideal that has somehow 
established itself in our imaginations, and that has, 
in these later days, recognized its real symbol in 
the physical organism, is the pledge of it. And con- 
science, continually urging us to the attainment of 
that ideal, is an ever present indication that the Be- 
ing who has worked hitherto for the perfection of 
organic harmony still works through the spirit of 
man for the production of a coming reality, — a re- 
ality of inexpressibly greater worth than all that has 
gone before. 

In conscience I find the analogue of instinct, but 
also something vastly higher. Like instinct it bears 
the impress of an intelligence that is not our intel- 
ligence, of a will that is not our will. It has the 
same quality of insistence combined with mystery. 
Like instinct it brings "the blind by a way that 
they knew not." As the instinct of the embryo 
impells it through successive changes to the reali- 
zation of certain definite organic forms, so the moral 
imperative urges the individual and the race to the 
progressive achievement of an ideal society. At 
the same time, conscience is in some respects the 
antithesis of instinct in its lower ranges. It could 
not be otherwise when the one is addressed to the 
perfection of a moral order, while the other is in- 
tended to secure only the harmony of physical re- 
lations. 

In the former, the moulding influence appears as 
a persuasive commanding message addressed to be- 
ings who may refuse to obey it. In the latter, it is 



360 WHAT IS REALITY? 

an overruling providence that accomplishes its de- 
signs without asking the cooperation or consent of 
the creature. But between these two extremes — 
the working that makes for purely physical organi- 
zation on the one hand, and that which makes for 
the purely moral on the other — we have many gra- 
dations of instinct in which the cooperation of the 
creature appears in varying degrees. 1 

But I must not forget that there is a school of writ- 
ers who affirm that all the phenomena of conscience 
can be accounted for without any reference to a su- 
perhuman agency. Conscience, it is said, has been 
gradually evolved from experiences of pain and plea- 
sure. It is a name that we have given to the emotions 
that certain social requirements excite in us. All 
that I have to say to this is, that I have never yet 
seen such an explanation that did not depend for 
its satisfaction upon the suppression of all the most 
essential characteristics of conscience. From the 
desire of avoiding pain or of securing pleasure, it is 
impossible to evolve anything approaching a moral 
motive. Vary the pleasure or pain as we will, the 
motive is always the same, — the desire of securing 
pleasure or of avoiding pain ; we have not so much 
as touched the idea of conscience. 

When I turn from such explanations to the con- 
science of real life I experience something the same 
feeling that I do when I go from the arguments that 
prove human beings to be mere automata to the 
contemplation of an actual living man. The con- 
trast of the real thing to the explained thing is no 

1 See Appendix A, " The Evolution of Conscience." 



OPTIMISM. 361 

greater in the one case than in the other. For the 
truth in either case I find no help in analysis. The 
concrete experimental fact, as conceived by men in 
all ages, is the one and only reality. I do not mean 
that men have always recognized in conscience the 
will of a personal God, but that they have with very 
few exceptions never failed to regard it as a thing 
of superhuman origin. 

He who traces morality in the nature of things 
may not be a theist, but he is in harmony with theism, 
for the nature of things is God manifesting himself 
in creation. He who tells us of a stream of ten- 
dency, or of the " Eternal not ourselves that makes 
for righteousness," affirms the most important part 
of our creed. And his testimony, if he be a man 
profoundly versed in the history and literature of the 
world, is valuable, even though it be linked with a 
denial of the existence of a personal God. We can 
leave the denial to take care of itself ; for the affirm- 
ative part of such a creed is the destruction of its 
negative part. And testimony from such a source 
as to the reality of an ex^a-human power that is 
leading society in the direction of its highest ideals, 
has a peculiar value because it is beyond the suspi- 
cion of an antecedent theistic bias. It appeals to 
us as a disinterested, wholly independent judgment 
reached by the study of nature and of history. 

Let us listen for a moment to Dr. Maudsley. He 
has studied the subject from a scientific, as Mr. 
Matthew Arnold has from a literary and historical, 
point of view. Familiarity with the mechanical 
aspect of things has banished from his mind all 



362 WHAT IS REALITY t 

thought of a Supreme Being ; but it has not in the 
least obscured his belief in a power that works in 
nature and in man for the attainment of moral 
ideals. In the ideals themselves, as well as in " the 
categorical imperative of the moral sense " that 
urges to their realization, he recognizes the work- 
ing of a formative power that has been in operation 
from the very beginning. " We are sure and can 
affirm," he says, " that a fundamental impulse of 
evolution is felt in the higher functions of mind," 2 
— an impulse " that cometh from afar, was before 
man was, works in his progress, prophesies in his in- 
stincts and aspirations, inspires his faiths, is inter- 
preted lamely in his creeds, and its end is not yet." 2 

Now if this view of the origin of the moral sense 
and of our religious ideals is the true one, — and it 
certainly expresses the collective experience of all 
the ages, — we are fully justified in retaining and em- 
phasizing the fundamental postulate of our religion. 
The Lord our God is not only a great God, He is 
beyond all peradventure a good God. As judged 
by his works, He desires and labors for that which 
men call goodness. The ideals that man is striving 
to realize are his ideals ; and the efforts that we 
make in the direction of goodness are not altogether 
ours, they are God working in us, for the bringing 
about of the great end toward which the process of 
creation has been moving from the beginning even 
until now. 

We are ready then for the next question, — one 
that always follows hard upon the conclusion to 
1 Body and Will, p. 205. 2 Ibid., p. 187. 



OPTIMISM. 363 

which we have been brought : Granted that the Au- 
thor of the world is and always has been actuated 
by a benevolent desire for the happiness of his crea- 
tures, is there any evidence that the means chosen 
have not proved a failure ? Why is the consum- 
mation of the plan so long postponed ? Why is 
there so much in the world that successfully works 
against it ? Has something gone wrong ? Have 
actors been called into being that have unexpectedly 
proved unmanageable ? Has the process got be- 
yond the control of the benevolence that conceived it 
and set it in motion ? 

Judged from the standpoint of human experience, 
this seems at first sight a reasonable hypothesis. 
There is without question much in the world that 
ought not to be. There is much that ought to be 
that is not yet. There is much that seems to make 
persistently for the frustration of that which is good, 
and for the indefinitely prolonged triumph of that 
which is evil. But there is another way of looking 
at it. It may be that all the evil, all the suffering, 
all the defeats of the power that makes for righteous- 
ness were foreseen from the beginning ; and that 
nevertheless the process as a whole was ordained. 
We cannot judge of a process till we know fully 
what is to be gained by it. War is a great evil ; 
but war is at times better than peace because of a 
better condition of things to which it leads. 

Both of these conceptions have found a place in 
our inherited theology. I do not mean that both 
views have been formally stated. The absolute 
foreknowledge of God has been uniformly insisted 



364 WHAT IS REALITY? 

upon as a necessary article of belief. But having 
been duly honored, it has been allowed to drop al- 
most completely out of sight ; or we might say, it 
has appeared only as the faint and inharmonious 
background of the picture that we have formed of 
the history of the divine government. 

In view of this fundamental doctrine, it has been 
impossible to affirm, in so many words, that any- 
thing unexpected has taken place ; and yet the fall 
of man has always been presented to our imagina- 
tions as a catastrophe, as an event that was not 
expected by the Creator. He had another and far 
better career planned for the human race than the 
one upon which it willfully entered. In other words, 
his plan was thwarted, and the counter-plan of re- 
demption was brought in for the rescue of some 
from the wreck. 

Dr. Newman, after passing in review the evidences 
of the moral disorder of the world, asks : " What 
shall be said to this heart-piercing, reason-bewilder- 
ing fact ? I can only answer that either there is no 
Creator, or this living society of men is, in a true 
sense, discarded from his presence. Did I see a 
boy of good make and mind, with the tokens on him 
of a refined nature, cast upon the world without pro- 
vision, unable to say from whence he came, his 
birthplace or his family connections, I should con- 
clude that there was some mystery connected with 
his history and that he was one of whom, from one 
cause or another, his parents were ashamed. Thus 
only should I be able to account for the contrast 
between the promise and the condition of his being. 



OPTIMISM. 365 

If there be a God, — since there is a God, — the 
human race is implicated in some terrible aborigi- 
nal calamity. It is out of joint with the purposes 
of its Creator." : In harmony with this view, the 
planting of an infallible church is regarded by him 
as an interference. It is an extraordinary interpo- 
sition for the defeat of an element that has got be- 
yond the control of the ordinary means of restraint. 
As I have already intimated, this does not seem 
to me to be the necessary or the true history of the 
moral disorder of the world. It is the traditional 
view, handed down to us from an age when men 
held very much narrower conceptions of the world 
process than they do to-day. But, to my thinking, it 
harmonizes with the Scriptural account of man no 
better than it does with the natural history account 
of him ; and in what follows I shall try to show that 
there is an ever increasing volume of evidence in 
support of the view that there has been no break in 
the plan of the Creator, and no change of policy. 

1 Apologia pro Vita Sua, chap. v. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE NATUKALNESS OF REVELATION. 

No law of nature has been discovered except 
through the patient examination of many facts ; nor 
can any law that is not built upon facts stand. On 
the other hand, it is an unquestionable truth that our 
knowledge of facts is, to a great extent, the outcome 
of the discovery of natural laws. When once, in 
any department of science, a working hypothesis has 
been reached, its obligation to facts is amply repaid 
by the reflex light which it throws upon them. From 
the standpoint of the newly discovered principle we 
may often be said to rediscover the very facts that 
have conducted us to it. The proportions of whole 
groups of phenomena, and even of subordinate prin- 
ciples, become essentially modified when they have 
found a place under a more comprehensive law 
which discloses their relations to other groups and 
principles. 

Evolution, as a universal method, aspires to the 
very first place in the hierarchy of law. It is, in fact, 
a tentative statement of that unity of principle which 
has long been held, by a scientific faith, to underlie 
all nature. If its claims are made good, therefore, 
it will leave nothing unmodified. The connection of 
great departments of thought hitherto isolated will 



THE NATURALNESS OF REVELATION. 367 

be progressively apprehended. Forces that have 
appeared to be antagonistic will be seen as comple- 
mentary. Ideas that have had their rise in limita- 
tion of view will be dissipated, and the element of 
truth which they contained will be incorporated in 
some larger thought. One conspicuous result of the 
application of such a principle must be to bring into 
greater prominence those features of phenomena and 
of departments of thought that mark their kinship 
to the rest of our knowledge, and to sink proportion- 
ately those features by which they are differentiated 
and held apart. The more completely isolated, 
therefore, any section of our thought, the more will 
a rearrangement of it be necessary. 

Now the Christian revelation has, in the tradi- 
tional conception, occupied a place so completely out- 
side that order of the world which we ordinarily call 
natural as to seem almost the antithesis of it. The 
ideas of interference, reversal, overruling, have been 
made so prominent that the change required for its 
adoption into the scheme of nature must, at first 
sight, appear revolutionary. And, so far as form is 
concerned, it is revolutionary. But in this it does 
not stand alone. The idea of revelation, as a series 
of isolated facts, was not itself an isolation. It was 
part of a larger conception which separated the sum 
of phenomena into two distinct classes : the natural 
and the supernatural, the orderly and the anomalous. 

Creation as well as revelation belonged to the lat- 
ter class. At the beginning of the world there was 
a brief period which was in every way distinct from 
the ages that came after it. This brief period was 



368 WHAT IS REALITY? 

the term of origins. As yet there was no course 
of nature, but the preparation for it was actively 
carried on during six days. The various organs of 
nature having been successively called into a fully 
developed existence, the work of creation ceased, and 
a uniform course of nature supervened. In this 
regulated course of things God acted mediately and 
at a distance. He was, as it were, outside an order 
which he had established, and which moved on with 
the routine regularity of a machine. But at certain 
times, and for definite purposes, the Creator broke 
into this order and declared his sovereignty by spe- 
cial and startling manifestations of power. 

So long as this conception of the world was undis- 
turbed, the prominence given to the idea of inter- 
ference in connection with the Christian revela- 
tion could not be diminished. Ignorance of natural 
laws inclined men to see supernatural interference 
in every exceptional phenomenon. The plague, the 
earthquake, the lightning, the storm, the eclipse, were 
not the outcome of the order of nature. They were 
the interruptions of that order. But, as science 
advanced, this picture was gradually transformed. 
One after another the extraordinary phenomena of 
the world were assigned their places in that order 
which they had been supposed to transcend. The 
realm of the supernatural suffered constant and dam- 
aging invasion, and the traditional views of creation 
and revelation were left in conspicuous loneliness. 
The conviction that the order and uniformity of na- 
ture is an all-embracing principle grew with every 
new discovery and with every success in classifica- 



THE NATURALNESS OF REVELATION. 369 

tion ; and, proportionately, the presumption against 
any exception to this regularity of natural cause and 
effect gained strength. 

But again there came a change. A new light 
broke upon the scientific world, which shook the con- 
ception of the uniformity of nature as severely as it 
had shaken the idea of disorderly interference. The 
hard-and-fast line which separated the epoch of begin- 
nings from the epoch of a settled and uniform course 
of nature was proclaimed to be imaginary. That 
little and mysterious compartment of time, solid with 
miracles, was made to pour all its wealth of efficiency, 
of wonders, of new departures and startling creations, 
into that very order of nature which science had so 
carefully guarded. Six days are insignificant when 
compared with ages upon ages that no man can num- 
ber ; but a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump. In 
this particular six days there was a pent-up wealth 
of transforming power not dreamed of by those who 
set free their contents : a power only beginning as yet 
to make itself felt in the rearrangement and trans- 
formation of our ideas. 

But we can see what some of the main tenden- 
cies of it must be. In the first place it will depose 
two old usurpers in the realm of thought, without 
much regard to the divine right of phrases. " Set- 
tled order of nature" " Supernatural interference" 
must together take their places among the great 
ones that have ceased to disturb the world. Our 
conception of nature as a mechanism must be super- 
seded by the analogies of organic life and of mind. 
There is no mere routine, no exact repetition. The 



370 WHAT IS REALITY t 

universe is a thing that has grown and is growing. 
Creation has been, and is, and will be. On every 
side we see not completed products, but beginnings, 
means, and materials. " E pur si muove " needs no 
longer to be said in an undertone. It is a fact, and 
a fact of far wider and profounder significance than 
was dreamed of by the persecuted Galileo. The 
world moves, and God moves in it. He is in every 
part of it, and He is working toward an end. He 
works not alone, but with and through the crea- 
ture. He works not forever with the same means 
and instruments, but continually with higher organs 
adapted to higher results. There is a uniformity, 
but it is the uniformity of an orderly mind of infinite 
resources. 

That most sacred article of scientific faith which 
affirms that the world is governed by system and by 
law is not set aside, but the conception of it is in- 
calculably enlarged and exalted. Evolution as really 
signalizes the liberation of human thought as did the 
breaking up of the solid dome of the sky when 
astronomy patiently but firmly led man's unwilling 
soul into the limitless heavens. Under it the laws 
of nature are no longer the rigid grooves of force in 
which alone power may move. They have become 
living things. As the great inductive philosopher 
said of prophecy, they have " springing and germi- 
nant accomplishments." " Behold, the former things 
are come to pass, and new things do I declare." 

What to our minds appear, and perhaps may 
always appear, as hitherto non-existent manifesta- 
tions of law have emerged, and must still be expected 



THE NATURALNESS OF BEVELATION. 371 

to emerge, all along the course of evolution. Into a 
world of darkness has come light, into a world of 
inert matter has come activity, into a world of inor- 
ganic activity has come life, into a world of unintel- 
ligent life has come intelligence, and then into a 
world of unreasoning intelligence there has come self- 
conscious reflecting reason, the revelation of the liv- 
ing creature to itself. 

For ages upon ages God had wrought his wonders 
in the world, bringing order out of chaos, complexity 
out of simplicity, activity out of inertness, filling 
every part of this fair planet with higher and still 
higher forms of beauty and strength. The sun rose 
as now in all the glory of his majesty and quickened 
every living thing. The creatures rejoiced in its 
warmth and in its light, but as yet they knew it not. 
They could be dazzled by its beams and blink a 
recognition, but they could not think about it. The 
light was shining in darkness, and the darkness com- 
prehended it not. All nature was replete with the 
materials of an objective revelation. Every grain 
of sand, and every drop of water, had its riddle to 
propound, but there was as yet no growing mind 
to be puzzled by them. 

But at length, when the world was old, there 
came another kind of light. The creature became a 
rational and moral being. This was that "true 
light, which lighteth every man, coming into the 
world." It was the beginning of the higher revela- 
tion. We cannot trace the stages of that gradual 
dawning of self-consciousness in the race. We can 
only picture it to ourselves as something like that 



372 WHAT IS REALITY ? 

which takes place in every individual. There came 
a time when man's eyes were opened, and he was re- 
vealed to himself as a living soul. Nor was this the 
whole contents of the primal revelation ; for condi- 
tioned upon the knowledge of self there arose, also, 
the dim, unformed conception of a higher intelligence 
to whom the moral self stood related. 

Now, having reached this stage, do we find any- 
thing which should incline us to believe that the pro- 
cess of creation is finished ? On the contrary, every- 
thing points to a further development. It would be 
the contradiction of what we find everywhere else in 
nature to entertain the hypothesis that an element 
which marks such a rise in the scale of being, as this 
of revelation, could suddenly appear in the system 
and never reappear in higher and more fully devel- 
oped forms. But in what aspect will it disclose it- 
self ? We cannot look for mere repetition, but rather 
for continuity with variety. We must anticipate 
that this new and profoundly modifying principle 
will manifest itself in forms adjusted to the very 
changes which its own action has wrought. 

These changes are certainly very important ones. 
Up to the time of man's advent the increase of en- 
lightenment has all the appearance of a free gift. 
The creature without effort of its own is advanced in 
the scale of organization ; and as a consequence his 
mental horizon is widened. Increase in the size and 
complexity of the brain appears in one species after 
another, and is transmitted by natural heredity to 
every individual of it. But when we reach the 
human species it looks as if we had also reached the 



THE NATURALNESS OF REVELATION. 373 

limit of gratuitous endowment, — as if everything 
henceforth were arranged for the self -education of a 
being of very great but undeveloped capacities. 

All the requirements for such an education are 
apparently furnished in the human organism and its 
surroundings. Nothing seems to be wanting either 
for progress or for discipline. For progress, not only 
because the human brain, a far more elaborate organ 
than the requirements of primitive man demands, is 
a perpetual revelation to itself, but also because the 
faculty of language permits an accumulation of en- 
lightenment. Whatever has been reached by the 
most advanced individuals may, under favorable cir- 
cumstances, become the permanent acquisition of the 
race. 

But, on the other hand, the provision for disci- 
pline is no less clear. Everything has been arranged 
for the development of character through the over- 
coming of difficulties. The brain of man is an inex- 
haustible fountain of wants. Physical, intellectual, 
moral, and religious wants make their appearance 
one after the other in the order of development. 
But man and his environment are so adjusted to each 
other that only the simplest of these can be grati- 
fied without effort. No large view of design can fail 
to recognize a meaning in this latter condition of 
things. 

For example, a most interesting argument to prove 
a beneficent design in creation has been framed by 
massing the circumstances which are immediately 
favorable to the existence and progress of mankind 
upon the earth. Air, water, light, and heat are so 



374 WHAT IS REALITY! 

generally diffused as to make a large part of the 
world habitable by man ; the forests, the rivers, and 
the sea were, before his coming, stocked with food 
for him; and the ground brought forth her fruits 
of many varieties ready to be gathered by his hand. 
Immense stores of iron, the good genius of material 
progress, were made in anticipation of a far-off de- 
velopment ; and, complementary to this, great depos- 
its of fuel were formed. The precious metals were 
given in just the right quantities to serve as the 
medium of exchange and thereby facilitate the inter- 
course of nations. So, also, the materials of artifi- 
cial light and the latent forces of electricity and 
steam were made ready to assist the upward move- 
ment of man when he should be prepared to make 
use of them. 

This is, as I have said, an interesting argument 
for the existence of a preconceived plan in the ar- 
rangement of the earth as an abode for civilized man. 
But now let us go on to observe that the manner 
of this preparation as related to the undeveloped 
mind of man is equally significant. The air, the 
light, and the water are free gifts, bestowed un- 
conditionally, and ready to be used almost without 
an effort. But beyond this, what obstacles are not 
placed in the way of man's becoming possessed of 
the world's treasures? 

The animals which exist for his food are swifter 
of foot than he ; and the forests which abound with 
these abound also with creatures that are as ready to 
make food of him as he of the lesser tribes or of 
them. The rivers and the sea are full of fish, but 



THE NATURALNESS OF REVELATION. 375 

he cannot outswim them. He has stone and wood 
lying about him ready to be used for weapons and 
utensils, but the stone is hard to shape and the 
wood to cut. The iron is ready for him, in great 
abundance, but not in such a form that he can appro- 
priate it. The most favored lands have no deposit 
of axes, knives, and ploughs for the encouragement 
of agriculture and civilization. This most helpful 
material was almost everywhere mingled with foreign 
substances, which rendered it useless until the skill 
of man had devised methods for separating it from 
them. 

The coal, the copper, and the oil are not so diffi- 
cult to prepare for use. But if we see design in 
their production, may we not with equal reason be 
asked to see design in their concealment, in their 
being so hidden away that man was ages in finding 
out their use ? And what shall we say to the fact 
that great masses of the coal deposit are so situated 
that men must fight their way through innumerable 
difficulties to get at them, only to find the object of 
their desire guarded by the twin dragons, flood and 
fire-damp? Again, the fruits of the earth were for the 
most part given to man, not in the forms in which 
we know them, but in forms far inferior and less 
nourishing. Human skill and diligence have done 
mucb to make them what they are. 

It is not otherwise with the provisions that have 
been made for the gratification of man's intellectual 
wants. There is the very same mingling of gratui- 
tous endowment with a condition of things that neces- 
sitates striving for higher acquisitions. The mind 



376 WHAT IS REALITY? 

of man and the external world have been so adjusted 
to each other that certain definite impressions and 
conclusions, practically the same for all individuals, 
are the immediate result of contact. But when we 
have said this we must admit further that nothing is 
more misleading than this same natural environment. 
The whole creation is written over with an objective 
revelation, but it is in various and strange languages. 
Nature awakens the curiosity of man and leads him 
on, but she does not pour out her treasures for the 
simple asking. There is, indeed, always something 
to reward the open eye and the attentive ear, but how 
unsatisfactory it all is ! Never silent to those who 
interrogate her, she yet fools us with half truths. 
When we are most serious she seems to jest. Her 
grandest utterances are riddles. We may say, in- 
deed, that all scientific progress has been the out- 
come of a series of hard- fought battles. 

And how does the individual stand related to the 
results of this progress ? He cannot inherit them by 
natural transmission. The child of civilized parents 
comes into a mental environment of the greatest com- 
plexity and splendor, — the property of individuals 
of the race to which he belongs, but not as yet Ms 
property. No matter how advanced the society into 
which he is born, or how well descended he may per- 
sonally be, no part of the accumulated mental trea- 
sures of the race can be his, except as the exertion of 
his individual energies and the development of his 
personal powers make them, in some modified form, 
his own. 

Do we find anything different when we come to 



THE NATURALNESS OF REVELATION. 377 

the sphere of morals ? On the contrary, there seems 
to be far less definiteness in the primary revelations 
of conscience than in those of the intellect. The 
fundamental principles of morality are dimly shad- 
owed forth in the least developed conscience. As in 
the purely intellectual world, certain data are given. 
There is a sense of duty and obligation, and con- 
nected with this, certain vague indications of the 
direction to be taken. But beyond these the soul is 
left to work out its own problems. It finds itself in 
a world of conflicting claims, desires, emotions, pas- 
sions. And to ascertain the bearing of the sense of 
duty upon the varied activities to which these urge 
is the labor of the man and of the race. 

Again, man has a religious nature. What pro- 
visions have been made for its development ? The 
account given by the Apostle Paul is in perfect har- 
mony with the facts which we have been consider- 
ing. The Great Educator, he tells us, determined 
the times before appointed, and the bounds of the 
habitation of all nations of men " that they should 
seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him, 
and find Him." 

Everywhere in the history of the nations we find 
this seeking. Everywhere the religious want has 
developed itself at an early stage in man's progress. 
But history also shows us that the finding was beset 
with difficulties. Here, as elsewhere, false ways had 
to be explored, and grievous errors had to be fallen 
into. The most ancient records of the great civiliza- 
tions seem, indeed, to indicate that a comparatively 
pure conception of God dawned upon some nations in 



378 WHAT IS REALITY f 

the early stages of their development. In the litera- 
tures of India, of China, of Egypt, -there are traces of 
a vague, inconstant belief in God as a supreme and 
benevolent ruler. 

But the course of the human mind is from instinct 
to reason. Beliefs that have a natural and instinc- 
tive origin suffer disintegration that they may subse- 
quently be reintegrated in higher and more distinct 
forms. The heaven that lies about us in our infancy 
may be dissolved by the questionings of manhood. 
But a true manhood builds again with materials 
drawn from reason and experience. A hard, strange, 
unnecessary labor this must seem to us except we 
remember that the forging of character through a 
process of overcoming, and not the possession of an 
inherited, unfought-for, instinctive belief, is the end 
of spiritual evolution. 

Now, in view of a plan of self -education so broadly 
developed and so consistently adhered to in all depart- 
ments, does it not seem as if any further revelation 
would signalize a reversal of method ? And in view 
of all that has been accomplished by man, does it not 
seem as if he might be left to work out the problem 
by himself ? These are two quite distinct questions. 
For an answer to the first one we must apply to the 
analogies of human systems of education; and for 
an answer to the second we must inquire of certain 
analogies of nature. It will be better for us, on 
some accounts, to give our attention to the latter 
question first. We will state it somewhat more defi- 
nitely as follows : Does the course of evolution make 
it antecedently probable that the endowment of prim- 



THE NATUB ALNESS OF BEVEL AT10N. 379 

itive man will prove sufficient for the realization of 
a career of unlimited development ? 

The first thought of evolution is, to almost every 
mind, that of unbroken progress in a direct line. It 
seems as if each improvement of structure ought to 
afford the conditions best suited for the production 
of a higher type. But such is not the fact. Every 
definite structural impulse has a tendency to exhaust 
itself, to become specialized in a permanent type 
that continues to repeat itself. Progress in this or 
that particular direction, after a time, comes to an 
end. If a higher type is to appear, it will have its 
origin in some quite new structural impulse ; and it 
will proceed from a form much less specialized than 
the one which it is destined to surpass. As Dr. Cope 
puts it : " Paleontology shows that the succession of 
living types has not been in a single straight line. 
It has been in many divergent lines, and a large 
number of these have not continued to the present 
time. . . . Each line, in fact, has developed to an 
extreme of specialization of structure which it would 
seem is incapable of modification in any direction very 
divergent from that which it has already taken." 1 

Now, does the history of the evolution of human 
society present any parallel to this? It certainly 
does. The human race in the course of its develop- 
ment has given rise to a succession of types ; and 
these types have borne the same relation to each 
other as those of which paleontology gives us the 
history. Every highly specialized, firmly organized 
society of ancient times tended to perpetuate itself 

1 Origin of the Fittest, p. 233. 



380 WHAT IS REALITY ? 

with less and less possibility of variation. That 
which had been was that which must be so long as 
the type lasted ; and the higher types that succeeded 
were not outgrowths from them, but developments 
from entirely new impulses, — new ideas, that had 
their origin in the least specialized, freest part of 
society. 

An emient writer on this subject has told us that 
while the first great step in civilization was the for- 
mation of " a cake of custom," the second great step 
was the breaking of it. " Probably," he says, " if 
we had historic records of the ante-historic ages, — if 
some superhuman power had set down the thoughts 
and actions of men ages before they could set them 
down for themselves, — we should know that this 
first step in civilization was the hardest step. But 
when we come to history as it is, we are more struck 
with the difficulty of the next step." 1 This next 
step, called, by way of antithesis, " breaking the cake 
of custom," is more truly characterized as the for- 
mation of a new type. It is the ordinary fate of 
extremely rigid types to be broken, whenever the 
environment to which they are specially adjusted is 
radically changed. The impossible thing in such 
cases is for the old institution to so modify itself by 
groivth as to not only escape deterioration, but to 
advance, without losing its identity, to a higher place 
in the scale of organization. 

The rigidity of the ancient types was greatly en- 
hanced by the circumstance that in them religion 
and politics supported each other. In fact, the two 

1 Physics and Politics, by Walter Bagehot, Esq. , p. 52. 



THE NATURALNESS OF REVELATION. 381 

spheres were in early ages one. Government lived 
by religious sanctions. It found in these the one ef- 
fective agency for controlling the eccentric tendencies 
of rude men, and the one cohesive principle by which 
it could hold them together. The head of the ancient 
family was invested with authority and sanctity not 
simply or chiefly as its progenitor. He was above all 
things else its king and priest. The power with which 
the imagination invested him and the sense of duty 
which fastened itself upon him had an almost purely 
religious origin. When he ceased by death to be 
the priest of the family, he became its god. At a 
later date, when families sprung from a common 
ancestor became united as a gens, a tribe, or a city, 
there was no essential change in this primitive concep- 
tion, though there was an extension of it. The chief 
of the tribe, the king of the city, was still the priest. 
Divinity hedged him about. He had no need of 
material force ; he had neither army nor treasury ; 
but, sustained by a faith that had a powerful influ- 
ence over the mind, his authority was sacred and in- 
violable. 1 So also was the whole system of things. 
The king, no less than the people whom he ruled, 
was fixed in the iron grasp of beliefs consecrated by 
the adhesion of untold generations. 

It is easy to see how under such a regime the 
ordinary sense of duty would be called forth solely 
in defense of that which was inherited, that which 
was known to be ancient. Innovation was an act of 
impiety not for a moment to be tolerated. It de- 
manded more than opposition ; there must be expia- 

1 The Ancient City, by Fustel De Coulanges, p. 38. 



882 WHAT IS BEALITYf 

tion, lest the anger of the gods should fall on the 
city that permitted the man of ideas to live. 

How, then, we must now ask, has it been possible 
for new types to arise and to supplant the old ? Let 
us seek first for the explanation in that original en- 
dowment of the human race that we were just now 
considering. As in the physical organism, so in the 
social, progress is manifestly provided for in the 
nature of things ; or, to speak more exactly, in the 
instincts of man. As soon as the instinct for self- 
preservation is satisfied, other instincts bestir them- 
selves, the gratification of which involves change. 
They may be felt at first only as an indefinite desire 
for a fuller, more satisfying life. But erelong they 
take definite forms. The desire for wealth is one 
form. The desire for a deeper insight into the real- 
ities of the world, and for a wider intellectual out- 
look, is another. The desire for more perfect social 
relations is another. 

But how are these instincts to achieve any free 
or large development under the conditions that we 
have been considering ? As fast as they make their 
appearance they are led captive by the machinery 
of the specialized society into which they are born. 
They are made to work in harness, to subserve 
well-recognized interests. Like the heads of certain 
tribes of savages, or like the feet of Chinese women, 
they are coerced into forms not contemplated by 
nature. Some of them are allowed a partial gratifi- 
cation ; but just in so far as they tend to antago- 
nize the established order, they are repressed. Not 
by the permission of this order, therefore, but only 



THE NATURALNESS OF REVELATION. 883 

in opposition to it can they lead to a higher social 
type. 

Shall we say, then, that these tendencies to varia- 
tion and expansion give rise to a new type only in 
those cases where they are sufficiently strong to 
break through the established order and make good 
their development in spite of it ? I think we must 
in general give this account of it. But, let us observe, 
the breaking through the old order is only the re- 
moval of an obstacle that bars the way to progress. 
There can be no formation of a higher type unless 
there be some new formative idea. Without this the 
tendencies that make for variation work only in the 
interests of destruction. They antagonize not simply 
the old order, they antagonize each other ; and the 
resulting changes are not in the direction of advance 
to a higher type. 

It is, then, for the emergence in the world of new 
formative conceptions that we have to account. 
Whence have come those germinal ideas that have 
revolutionized and reconstructed society because they 
had the life and power of a great development in 
them? — -ideas that once found no place in human 
thought, and that, when they appeared, were foreign 
and alien to its most cherished beliefs. Let us not 
make the mistake of thinking that they have had an 
indefinite, impersonal origin. It is often said of 
such ideas that they spring from the masses. They 
are thought of as being in everybody's mind at once, 
or, according to a popular phrase, "in the air." Un- 
questionably there is a certain amount of truth in 
this. The restlessness of instincts that press for 



384 WHAT IS REALITY? 

satisfaction must be felt by a large class before any- 
new idea, however true or great, can exercise a trans- 
forming influence upon society. But the idea itself 
has no impersonal origin. It may be that we are able 
only now and then to trace to their personal origins 
the great conceptions that have moved the world. 
But could we so trace them we should probably in 
every case come upon a distinct revelation. 

By revelation I mean the direct assistance and 
enlightenment of a human mind by a mind infinitely 
greater than its own, — a mind with which it is organ- 
ically connected. Not that such assistance and en- 
lightenment is confined to the few exceptionally great 
ideas whose transforming power is clearly marked. 
We can, I think, recognize the same working of 
an intelligence greater than our intelligence in the 
more ordinary productions of men. In every de- 
partment of intellectual life there are those who 
can testify to the reality of that which we call in- 
spiration. 

In a former chapter we took note of a class of phe- 
nomena to which the name unconscious cerebration 
has been given. A constructive process is carried 
on in the brain, quite independently of our con- 
sciousness, and the outcome of this is the satisfac 
tory solution of a problem, for which we had vainly 
labored in our hours of consciousness. We examined 
the explanation of this that is offered by the " philos- 
ophy of the unconscious ; " and we found it empty, 
— the merest hollow shell of a phrase. The results 
we had to account for had all the appearance of 
being the outcome of intelligence ; and not only so, 



THE NATURALNESS OF REVELATION. 385 

they were clearly the manifestation of a higher intel- 
ligence, a stronger mind than the one in which they 
were discovered as a free gift. May we not trace 
to this source also those special inspirations that come 
to gifted men, in poetry, in music, in every branch 
of constructive science ? 

But it is not in these that we find the most im- 
pressive evidences of an intelligence that works with 
and supplements the deficiencies of our intelligence, 
It is in the sphere of the moral and the religious 
life that this power not ourselves shows itself in its 
most commanding forms. Only when a great world- 
moving, world - transforming idea breaks through 
the ordinary routine of men's thoughts are we filled 
with the consciousness of a grandeur in human his- 
tory that is more than human. 

For illustration's sake I will specify three ideas 
that seem to me to bear the most unmistakable im- 
press of a mind greater than the human mind, 
through the instrumentality of which they have been 
communicated. First, the idea of the brotherhood 
of mankind. How in that old world of exclusive, 
mutually repelling nationalities could such a concep- 
tion spring up ? Certainly not from those whose 
interest it was to keep everything unchanged. Cer- 
tainly not from the multitude superstitiously fearful 
of the slighest deviation from the beaten track. It 
came from the philosophers, the intellectual outlaws 
of society. We cannot say who first conceived the 
idea that the religion of the state was not the high- 
est kind of religion, that there were duties that 
should take precedence of those prescribed by it, 



386 WHAT IS BEAMTYf 

that the individual is something more than a mem- 
ber of the city or the nation to which he belongs. 

These ideas were enunciated in a very positive 
form by Zeno, the founder of the Stoics, and under 
the fostering influence of that sect of philosophers 
gave rise to a fundamental principle of Roman 
law : the principle that there is a bond of unity 
among mankind that transcends and annihilates all 
class or national limitations. 1 But through a suc- 
cession of minds, antecedent to Zeno, we can trace 
the conception in somewhat less developed forms. 
Sometimes it is little more than a protest against 
the narrowness of the old institutions. Often it is 
more destructive than constructive. But wherever 
it originated, it was a higher thought of the world, a 
dim comprehension of a development yet to be, that 
had its spring neither in interest, nor in experience, 
nor in logic. 2 It was of the nature of a prophecy, 
that anticipated a wholly new order of things, an 
order not understood by those who with the great- 
est intensity of conviction enunciated its principles, 

Another idea that has had a most transforming 
influence upon the world is that which assures us 
that there is virtue in the pursuit of truth for its 
own sake. With our experience of civilization we 

1 Leeky's History of European Morals, vol. i. pp. 294, 295, and vol. 
ii. p. 42. 

2 " In primitive ages religion did not say to a man, showing him 
another man, — That is thy brother. It said to him, — That is a 
stranger ; he cannot participate in the religious acts of thy hearth ; 
he cannot approach the tomb of thy family ; he has other gods than 
thine, and cannot unite with thee in a common prayer ; thy gods 
reject his adoration, and regard him as their enemy ; he is thy foe 
also." — The Ancient City, p. 124, 



THE NATURALNESS OF REVELATION. 387 

are able to justify this idea by its practical results. 
But we have to remember that it found a place 
among the unreasoned convictions of great men long 
before it could be so justified. Through all the 
ages established religion and popular prejudice have 
been arrayed against the principle of seeking truth 
for its own sake. He who acted in accordance with 
it was an enemy of society and of God. Yet the 
idea has lived and conquered, till it has become a 
commonplace. This also, then, I call a revelation 
and a prophecy. 

The third great idea of the world that seems, 
clearly, to be of superhuman origin is that which 
recognizes as one the God who is the creative and 
sustaining principle of the universe, and at the same 
time the intimate of every human soul. 

Religion as the outcome of the ordinary working 
of the human mind has been derived from two quite 
distinct sources. Fustel de Coulanges gives the fol- 
lowing account of this dual origin : " In this race 
(the Grseco - Roman) the religious idea presented 
itself under two different forms. On the one hand, 
man attached the divine attribute to the invisible 
principle, to the intelligence, to what he perceived of 
the soul, to what of the sacred he felt in himself. 
On the other hand, he applied his ideas of the divine 
to the external objects which he saw, which he loved 
or feared ; to physical agents that were the masters 
of his happiness and of his life. These two orders 
of belief laid the foundations of two religions that 
lasted as long as Greek and Roman society. They 
did not make war upon each other ; they even lived 



388 WHAT IS REALITY t 

on very good terms, and shared the empire over 
man; but they never became confounded. Their 
dogmas were always entirely distinct, often contra- 
dictory; and their ceremonies and practices were 
absolutely different." 1 

Now, let us remember that this same Greek and 
Roman society was the soil into which Christian 
monotheism struck its root and made its first strong 
growth. The Christian idea took up into itself and, 
as it were, absorbed these two divergent religious 
motives. 

That we may the better understand the significance 
of this change, let us see what the antecedent devel- 
opment from these principles had been. From the 
introspective root was developed the religion of the 
famity, the worship of ancestors, and later on the 
god of the tribe or city, with the priest king as his 
representative. From the consciousness of external 
nature sprang numerous deifications of the elements 
that, with similar attributes, were worshiped under 
a variety of names in different communities. Then 
came another great change. Greek philosophy grad- 
ually melted down the crude thought of earlier ages, 
and attempted to separate the truth from the baser 
material with which it was combined. 

Under this treatment the religion that had origi- 
nated with the dim recognition of a divine element 
in man was brought back to the point whence it had 
gone forth to lose itself in external forms. It has 
been said that before Socrates men never thought of 
a duty except as a command of the ancient gods. 

1 The Ancient City, pp. 159-161. 



THE NATURALNESS OF REVELATION. ,339 

It is certain that the great distinction and main 
offense of his teaching was that he separated morals 
from religion. He robbed the little gods of their 
prestige and authority by discovering the princi- 
ple of duty in the human conscience, and by hold- 
ing that the concrete forms of duty must be ascer- 
tained by a diligent study of the relations of actual 
life. In the course of the intellectual and moral 
development that resulted from this new doctrine 
some minds tried to keep their hold on religion by 
elevating the conception of it to correspond with an 
expanding morality. But for the most part religion 
remained stationary while ethics developed away 
from it, and in antagonism to it. 

Under the stimulus of the same intellectual quick- 
ening, the godlike beings that had sprung from the 
contemplation of external nature gradually vanished 
out of sight. Men not only had their eyes opened to 
see through them, but the more religious and imagi- 
native had roused within them the consciousness of a 
vague yet more real existence, of which the deposed 
ones had been only the partial and very misleading 
representatives. But in this department of thought, 
also, the general drift was away from the gods and 
away from everything that had been known as reli- 
gion. In the enthusiasm of a new intellectual life 
philosophers were confident of the ability of man to 
live without its support. The established concep- 
tions of the gods were so far below their apprehen- 
sion of the ideal man as to seem hopelessly out of 
relation to it. 

But this was only transitional. As thought and 



S90 WHAT IS REALITY? 

life moved on it became more and more evident that 
morality could not stand alone, — that its truths, 
though elevating and unmistakable, were, without 
God, things separated from the vital element of the 
universe. Stoicism had moral and intellectual trea- 
sures of great value. Epicureanism had the same. 
But somehow both were like cleverly constructed ma- 
chines that will not work. The stream of energy that 
moves the world could not be made to enter them. 

When, therefore, it was clearly seen that morality 
without religion is morality without life, a seeking 
after God ensued. Men began to search diligently 
among the ruins of their old conceptions for some ger- 
minal grain of truth that might be quickened in the 
light of a higher morality, some forgotten and overlaid 
spring of the water of life that should make the empty 
veins of their ethical systems throb again. By the 
idealization of popular conceptions their poets labored 
to construct a God that should satisfy the conditions 
of their higher human creed. " As regards the edu- 
cated classes," says Uhlhorn, "we may perhaps come 
to this conclusion : faith in the gods of the old reli- 
gions had disappeared. . . . The majority substi- 
tuted a kind of monotheism. They imagined some- 
thing godlike above the gods, a divine first principle, 
or at least they had a presentiment of this without 
clearly discerning it, and especially without being- 
able definitely to distinguish it from the world. 
This dissolving polytheism led naturally to panthe- 
ism." 1 But all was unsatisfactory. 

1 Conflict of Christianity with Heathenism, translated by Egbert C. 
Smyth and C. J. H. Ropes, p. 51. 



I 



THE NATURALNESS OF REVELATION . 391 

Philosophy could not of itself reach a living con- 
ception of God. But what it could and did bring 
men to was a hungering and thirsting after God. 
What Graeco-Roman culture could not produce for 
itself, that it was ready to receive. So humble had it 
become in its need that, while conquering the world, 
it could stoop to ask a religion from any nation that 
had anything satisfactory to offer. The earnestness 
and depth of this feeling is powerfully manifested in 
the zeal with which multitudes devoted themselves 
to the severely ascetic discipline of the god Mithras. 
This was a progressive cult with many degrees of 
consecration. Its disciplines included the rack, hor- 
rors, flagellations, standing and lying in ice and snow 
sometimes for twenty days at a time. " They were 
so severe that many lost their lives in them. Yet 
great numbers, including nobles, and even emperors, 
pressed forward for the privilege of becoming war- 
riors of Mithras." 1 

Not less remarkable was the attitude of many 
toward the religion of a people who beyond all others 
were the objects of hatred and contempt. The Jews, 
with the synagogue and the Greek translation of the 
Old Testament, were established in almost every city 
of the empire, and around them had gathered many 
who had found in the blended morality and religion 
of their Scriptures the God whom they were seek- 
ing. In these, the proselytes of the gate, " devout 
persons," as they are called in the New Testament, 
we have the first indications of the new type that is 
to be. This is the true Israel accepting the higher 
1 Uhlhorn, p. 324. 



392 WHAT IS REALITY t 

and purer thought of God enshrined in Judaism, and 
ready for the fuller revelation of Christianity. Their 
position is unique. They do not become Jews. 
They reject just that part of Judaism that Christ 
rejected; and they assimilate, by the selective in- 
stinct of normal spiritual wants, just those elements 
that the Old Testament has in common with the New. 
The beginnings of things are apt to be obscure. 
They are often small, and therefore overlooked as 
insignificant. But they are of all things the most 
important. It will therefore be worth our while to 
study this phenomenon, that we may understand, so 
far as may be, the nature of the adjustments that 
produced it. Let us scrutinize first the want that is 
to be met. 

The thought of the age had, as we have seen, 
worked itself free from polytheism. It had achieved 
a speculative monotheism. But in the process it had 
emptied the thought of God of almost every charac- 
teristic. He was the all-pervading and most ador- 
able essence of things; the energy and life of the 
world. But the face of this imposing idealization 
was a blank. It had neither eyes to behold nor 
ears to hear. It was a god afar off, and not a god 
near at hand. It was as difficult to associate it with 
morality as with the love and joy and sorrow of the 
human heart. Every effort to reach a conception 
that brought God near to the individual seemed the 
destruction of the greater thought, and a return to 
the little gods of polytheism. This insurmountable 
difficulty led Varro, " the most learned of the Ro- 
mans," to assume the necessity of three kinds of reli- 



THE NATURALNESS OF REVELATION. 393 

gion, — one for the poets, another for the philoso- 
phers, and a third for the people. How did Judaism 
solve this problem ? 

Did it disclose a deity in whom there were no con- 
flicting attributes? On the contrary, it offered a 
conception of God made up of those very elements 
that the philosophers and poets of heathendom had 
deemed mutually exclusive. It proclaimed one God, 
the infinite, all-embracing power, the comprehensive 
intelligence of the universe, who is at the same time 
the intimate of every human soul. The Hebrew 
prophets made no effort to harmonize these concep- 
tions. The difficulties that beset the philosophers 
had for them no existence. They not only affirmed 
these antithetical aspects of the divine character 
without qualification or explanation, but they contin- 
ually associated them in the most startling contrasts. 

" Thus saith the High and Lofty One that inhab- 
iteth eternity, whose name is Holy ; I dwell in the 
high and holy place, with him also that is of a con- 
trite and humble spirit." " Thus saith the Lord, 
the heaven is my throne, and the earth is my foot- 
stool. Where is the house that ye build me ? and 
where is the place of my rest? For all these things 
hath my hand made ; and all these things have been, 
saith the Lord : but to this man will I look, even to 
him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and that 
trembleth at my word." The exaltation of God does 
not make Him oblivious of the thoughts and motives 
of the heart. " The Lord is in his holy temple ; the 
Lord's throne is in heaven : his eyes behold, his 
eyelids try the children of men." He is above all 



394 WHAT IS REALITY? 

things the author, the upholder, and the embodiment 
of morality. He, and He alone, represents the high- 
est ideal of righteousness possible to the conception 
of man. 

Where, then, shall we say was the relief? Is 
ignoring the difficulty equivalent to a solution of 
it? Isaac Taylor, in allusion to this antithetical 
characteristic of Hebrew theology, truly remarks: 
" The theistic affirmations that are scattered through- 
out the books of the Old Testament are not suscep- 
tible of a synthetic adjustment by any rule of logical 
distribution." x 

I think we must affirm the relief to be this, that 
the prophetic utterances produce conviction with- 
out justifying themselves to the understanding; or 
rather, that they convince the spiritual understand- 
ing without appealing to the logical. They are not 
the conclusions of reasoners ; they are the categori- 
cal deliverances of those who have immediate know- 
ledge, — of those who know without understanding 
how they know, except through the revelation of 
God in their souls. Conscience, when it is clearly 
recognized, appears to all men as the mandate of 
another, — as an inner voice revealing and insisting. 
But the prophets heard this voice as no other men 
ever had. The nature of it was not a matter of 
speculation to them. As Socrates knew, what the 
world before him had not known, that the source of 
morality was within and not without, so they knew 
that the voice of conscience was none other than the 
voice of God ; and this knowledge was a fire within 
them till they proclaimed it to others. 

1 The Spirit of the Hebrew Poetry. 



THE NATURALNESS OF REVELATION. 395 

To declare this vital, personal connection of God 
and man is the distinctive office of the prophet. He 
is not called to exhibit the Almighty to the eyes of 
the logical reason. He is not raised up for the pur- 
pose of prescribing external moulds into which the 
thought of Him must be run. He declares, and 
strives to draw out in others, that consciousness of the 
truth which, from the side of God, is forever press- 
ing its claims in the face of conflicting influences, 
both inward and outward. " Wherewith shall I come 
before the Lord, and bow myself before the high 
God? Shall I come before Him with burnt-offer- 
ings, with calves of a year old ? Will the Lord be 
pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands 
of rivers of oil ? Shall I give my first-born for my 
transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my 
soul?" There speaks the very spirit of heathen 
religion. It is the voice of the unemancipated wor- 
shiper seeking the direction of a humanly organized 
infallibility. How does the prophet answer it? 
" He hath showed thee, O man, what is good ; and 
what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, 
and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy 
God?" 

It is not easy to define inspiration, perhaps it is 
unwise to try to define it. But in the prophets of 
the Hebrew Scriptures we have the thing itself. In 
these writers the consciousness of God realizes itself 
to a degree which is absolutely unique. They know 
God. Their utterances are their experiences. He 
has spoken in their souls. They see clearly and with 
certainty that which others have beheld only vaguely. 



396 WHAT IS REALITY? 

And as the scattered, incoherent thoughts of a mind 
that has sought in vain the solution of an intellectual 
problem rush together and become organic at the 
touch of a true explanation, so the ineffectual reach- 
ings of the mind after God are merged in conviction 
through the sincere, unsophisticated utterances of 
souls in which God has truly manifested himself. In 
the inspiration of the prophets there is nothing con- 
trary to nature. It is simply nature at its highest. 
It is the prophetic embodiment of the new creature, 
— of the new type which struggles for supremacy. 

History lends no countenance to the assumption 
that the utterances of the Hebrew prophets were 
merely the outcome of the national consciousness. 
They cannot be thus accounted for. More than else- 
where that element in human evolution which initi- 
ates variation, that mysterious, separate, transcen- 
dental power that comes into the world like a spirit 
from another realm, manifests itself in them. 

From the very beginning they are a higher ele- 
ment, unique in the nation, unique in the history of 
the world. Anticipating, as they do, in the rudest 
ages, the" latest results of social development, they 
are an inexplicable enigma to those who fail to rec- 
ognize the reality and the greatness of the creative 
factor in evolution. " Where," asks Dean Church, 
in speaking of the Psalms, " in those rough, cruel 
days did they come from, those piercing, lightning- 
like gleams of strange, spiritual truth, those mag- 
nificent outlooks over the kingdom of God, those 
raptures at his presence and his glory, those wonder- 
ful disclosures of self-knowledge, those pure outpour- 



THE NATURALNESS OF REVELATION. 397 

ings of the love of God ? " Where, indeed, but from 
God himself ? 

We have then reached a conclusion that justifies 
the hypothesis with which we set out, namely, that 
the personal and direct guidance of the process of 
evolution by the Creator did not cease with the 
advent of man. We said that it would be the con- 
tradiction of what we find elsewhere in the world to 
believe that an element that marks such a rise in the 
scale of being as revelation should appear, and never 
reappear in fuller and more developed forms. We 
said, further, that we ought not to look for mere 
repetition, but rather for continuity with variety. 
We ought to expect that this profoundly modifying 
principle would manifest itself in forms adjusted to 
the very changes that its own action has wrought. 

We then pointed out certain new departures in the 
history of human thought that seemed to have origi- 
nated in extraordinary and special impulses directly 
from the mind of God. In such manifestations we, 
however, found nothing that we could call supe?*- 
natural. They were held to be suj^erhuman^ but 
natural in the sense that they were fully in accord 
with the method that from the beginning has char- 
acterized the advance from lower to higher stages of 
being. 

This answers one of our questions; and we may 
go on to the consideration of the other. 

In the adjustments of the human race to its sur- 
roundings we found a great volume of evidence indi- 
cating that man's higher development was, from the 
first, intended to be wrought out by a system of self- 



898 WHAT IS UEAL1TY1 

education. And in view of this, a gratuitous revela- 
tion suggested an interference, or reversal of method. 
This consideration might, on general principles, be 
dismissed with a brief answer. But we have inher- 
ited certain views with regard to an infallible church, 
an infallible book, and miracles, which make revealed 
religion appear to be quite inconsistent with the 
method that characterizes man's natural education. 
We must therefore consider these ideas somewhat in 
detail, 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE INFALLIBLE CHURCH. 

Thomas De Quincey, in an argument intended 
to show that the Bible must refuse to teach science, 
says : " It is clear as is the purpose of daylight, that 
the whole body of the arts and sciences composes one 
vast machinery for the irritation and development of 
the human intellect. For this end they exist. To 
see God, therefore, descending into the arena of sci- 
ence, and contending as it were for his own prizes 
by teaching science in the Bible, would be to see 
Him intercepting from their evident destination his 
own problems, by solving them himself." a 

This is just as true in every other department of 
human activity as in that of the sciences. In the 
last chapter we tried to show that man is so related 
to his surroundings in every direction as to indicate 
an elaborate arrangement for the development of 
character through the overcoming of difficulties. At 
first sight, therefore, the supposition of additional 
instruction, of a gratuitous revelation in any de- 
partment, seems to present the great Educator as 
" intercepting from their evident destination his own 
problems by solving them himself." 

But, on the other hand, the very assumption that 

1 Essay on Protestantism, 



400 WHAT IS REALITYt 

we have made — that this arrangement is educational 
— carries with it a contrary implication. Having 
summoned to our aid a human analogy, we ought not 
to stop with a half-way application of it. In every 
system of human education, opposed principles strive 
together and modify each other. Is it not, therefore, 
reasonable to believe that the same antagonistic and 
apparently contradictory elements will appear in the 
case of God educating the race ? and that they will 
appear in something the same proportions? The 
first and most important end aimed at in the educa- 
tion of a child is the development and strengthening 
of its faculties. It is not a question of how to 
stretch to its utmost and cram to its fullest a recep- 
tacle ; but more particularly, of how to draw out 
and train possibilities that are dormant. One prime 
object of a true educator, therefore, is to create 
wants. Another is to make the pupil satisfy those 
wants by his own efforts. He will watch the process. 
He will be careful not to interfere with it. But 
mark, he will interfere with it when difficulties are 
encountered that are too great for the struggling 
mind ; or when the stagnation of routine needs to be 
broken up by the introduction of new ideas. 

We may then state our deductions from the edu- 
cational analogy in the shape of two antecedent 
probabilities. In the first place there is a probability 
that the human mind will, at different stages of its 
course, be furnished with additional data for the per- 
fecting of its education ; and, in the second place, 
there is a strong probability, bordering upon cer- 
tainty, that no revelation will come to it in such a 



THE INFALLIBLE CHURCH. 401 

form as to involve a radical change of its relation to 
environment. The new elements furnished will be of 
the nature of materials for it to work upon, and of 
stimuli to draw out its powers. They will not be of 
such a nature as to bring to an abrupt close its career 
in the working out of its own destiny. 

So much for antecedent probabilities. Now let us 
inquire, — how do these probabilities derived from 
the analogies of education correspond with that 
which Christendom holds to be a revelation from 
God ? Clearly, it does not agree with some of the 
conceptions of Christianity which have been made 
prominent. It does not agree with that representa- 
tion which makes it the deliverance of truth in the 
form of a fully elaborated product ready to be assim- 
ilated without effort. Nor with that conception 
which regards it as an instrument for the subjugation 
or suppression of human reason. It is diametrically 
opposed to an assumed revelation that substitutes 
itself through the medium of a book or of the living 
voice for the reason and progressive moral sense. 
Therefore, if any one of these ideas truly represents 
the Christian revelation, there is a difference between 
natural religion and Christianity that cannot be rec- 
onciled. 

But these conceptions may be false. They have 
been protested against by some in every age of the 
church. If the methods that characterize evolution 
in its earlier stages are retained in its later, we should 
anticipate that the historic development of Christian- 
ity in response to a hostile environment would give 
rise to many specialized forms of thought not des- 



402 WHAT IS REALITY? 

tined to survive, though serving a temporary purpose. 
History helps us to trace the rise and growth of 
many such conceptions, and to measure the influence 
that environment has had in producing them. Our 
knowledge of the human spirit and of its reluctance 
to respond to the highest incentives permits us further 
to conjecture the origin of some of these forms. And 
since in us the principle of natural selection has been 
supplemented by rational intelligent selection, it is 
our duty to challenge with criticism every doubtful 
phase of Christianity that comes to us as the result 
of a long historic development. 

First, as to the doctrine of an infallible church. 
Is Christianity responsible for the belief that God 
reveals himself to man only, or chiefly, through the 
authoritative utterances of an organized priesthood, 
divinely appointed for that purpose ? Let us see just 
what the points of contrast are between such a view 
of revelation and that which sees in it the continuity 
of the methods of nature. Cardinal Newman has set 
forth one of the most important of these in the fol- 
lowing words : " The distinction between natural 
religion and revealed lies in this, that the one has a 
subjective authority, and the other an objective. 
Revelation consists in the manifestation of the invisi- 
ble divine power, or in the substitution of the voice 
of a lawgiver for the voice of conscience. The 
supremacy of conscience is the essence of natural 
religion ; the supremacy of Apostle, or Pope, or 
Church, or Bishop, is the essence of revealed." * 

Here are two very clearly defined conceptions. 

1 Development of Doctrine, p. 86. 



THE INFALLIBLE CHURCH. 403 

Which is the true one? We cannot have two 
supremes. Let us glance at some of the main lines 
of argument through which the defenders of the 
supremacy of an infallible church appeal to the 
reason and common sense of men. First, there is the 
argument from necessity. " The common sense of 
mankind," Dr. Newman tells us, " feels that the very 
idea of revelation implies a present informant and 
guide, and that an infallible one." * The assumption 
of unbelievers that " a revelation, which is to be re- 
ceived as true, ought to be written on the sun," though 
it may not be abstractly defensible, appeals, it is 
said, " to the common sense of the many, with great 
force." And "till these last centuries the visible 
church was, at least to her children, the light of the 
world, as conspicuous as the sun in the heavens ; and 
the creed was written on her forehead, and pro- 
claimed through her voice, by a teaching as precise 
as it was emphaticaL" 2 

The subjective ground of this dictate of common 
sense seems to be summed up in the expression, 
" We feel a need, and she, of all things under 
heaven, supplies it." And this need is more expli- 
citly defined in words which Dr. Newman quotes from 
another : " The human mind wishes to be rid of 
doubt in religion." Now, on the ground that man's 
desires afford a reliable basis for inferring exactly 
what will be given him, these arguments are forcible. 
And if we advance further to the position that what 
appears to man as the shortest way to the satisfaction 

1 Development of Doctrine, p. 87. 

2 Grammar of Assent, p. 366. 



404 WHAT IS REALITY f 

of his desires is always the best way, it is in the 
highest degree reasonable to anticipate that a benev- 
olent God will answer his prayer for spiritual repose 
by establishing just such an institution as the Roman 
Church, with its living voice of infallibility ; that 
He will, through human representatives, give abso- 
lute and final answers to all the questions of believ- 
ers as they arise, feeding them as the sparrow feeds 
its young, asking only that they shall open their 
mouths and permit them to be filled. 

But if, on the other hand, experience teaches us 
that these wants of man, which are so imperative 
in the sphere of religion, are not peculiar to that 
sphere, but are equally urgent in all the other de- 
partments of life ; if the method of education pursued 
throughout nature is a hard one, making the growth 
and survival of men everywhere dependent upon 
uninterrupted effort and conflict, so that of all the 
conceivable gifts of God the one most universally 
desired is rest, — rest of a kind that God has not 
granted ; and if further experience has taught us 
that human desires are not a reliable standard by 
which to measure the amount of assistance that is 
good for man, that they are at best indications of 
certain elements of good which can be useful only 
when associated with other elements which men dis- 
like and regard as evils, so that the "vanity of 
human wishes "is a commonplace ; then, I say, the 
presumption which we have drawn from the desires 
and alleged needs of man is just the opposite of that 
which we ought to draw. The very fact that the in- 
fallible church meets so perfectly the self-indulgent 



THE INFALLIBLE CHURCH. 405 

mood of would-be conscientious men in an age of 
intellectual conflict, a mood most sparingly gratified 
in every other sphere of life, affords a strong pre- 
sumption against its being from the Author of life. 
It savors of humanity. 

How, then, let us ask, does Protestantism stand 
related to these same needs? Does it deny their 
reality? Does it affirm that no revelation has been 
given that meets them ? On the contrary, it offers 
a construction of Christianity that meets them all, 
though not to the full extent demanded. It meets 
them in just that modified, limited way that char- 
acterizes nature's response to human wants in all 
other departments. The contrast between the Cath- 
olic and the Protestant conceptions of revelation 
often makes the latter seem the denial of any assist- 
ance afforded to the individual. Dr. Newman seems 
to have been thinking in this way of Protestantism 
when he addresses his arguments to u those who 
maintain that Christian truth must be gained solely 
by personal efforts." * But Protestantism takes no 
such extreme position. It interprets our Lord's 
promise of the cooperation of the Spirit as made not 
alone to the disciples, or to those who should be 
added to the number of the apostles, or to their suc- 
cessors in office, but to all believers, and as having 
a continual realization, through all ages, in the ex- 
perience of seekers after truth. So, again, the differ- 
ence between the Roman and the Protestant theories 
is not that one recognizes the principle of a living 
human medium of revelation and that the other re- 

1 Development of Doctrine, p. 83. 



406 WHAT IS REALITY! 

jects it. Both affirm the importance and necessity 
of living teachers and guides, but they construe 
differently the relation in which these stand to the 
human reason. 

The Protestant construction finds its perfect anal- 
ogy in the progressive revelations of the scientific 
world. Science moves onward by hypotheses. It 
is by the patient verification, or modification, or 
disproof, of these that it advances continually to 
broader and truer positions. And what the leaders 
in each branch of science are to those who interest 
themselves in it, that the various religious guides, 
Biblical scholars, philosophers, theologians, pastors, 
and men eminent for practical Christianity are to 
those " who follow on to know the Lord." In sci- 
ence the hypotheses of the pioneers of thought are 
often accepted as if they were verified theories by 
those who look to them for guidance ; and if the 
evidence in their favor accumulates, they are ad- 
vanced, in the general acceptance, to a position 
which is equivalent to certainty. So Christians may 
rally round a system of doctrine, and treat it pro- 
visionally as certain. But as no scientific truth 
which men have formulated is considered proof 
against a wider comprehension of facts, so a Pro- 
testantism that is true to its principles holds itself 
ready to reconsider any of its statements that have 
been the result of efforts to systematize the truths 
given in Scripture. 

Let us pass on to the argument from continuity. 
This appeals more strongly than an argument from 
the nature of things to those who are inclined to 



THE INFALLIBLE CHURCH. 407 

absolutism. The infallible church, it is said, is not 
an addition to Christianity, it is a continuation 
from that which gave birth to Christianity. It sus- 
tains the same relation to each generation of Chris- 
tians that the Jewish and apostolic churches sus- 
tained to those who were educated under them. 
We are certainly not prepared to deny that the 
Jewish established church was sanctioned by God 
as a temporary expedient. But we have, at the 
same time, to recognize the existence of another and 
higher element that was equally of divine appoint- 
ment, — an element that made for progress, that 
addressed itself to the moral consciousness of men, 
and that continually came in conflict with, and over- 
ruled, the prescriptions of the established religion. 
From which of these elements was Christianity a 
continuity ? 

It is hardly necessary for us to set down here an 
answer to this question. At no period of its his- 
tory did the Jewish church more closely resemble 
the Church of Rome than in the centuries between 
the return from exile and the coming of Christ. 
The priests and the prophets had made common 
cause, religion was largely identified with outward 
observances, and the word of the Scriptures was 
overlaid with a mass of tradition that took prece- 
dence of it. The founder of Christianity made no- 
thing of the authority of this church. He went 
back to first principles. He declared his continuity 
with the prophets. He did not simply institute a 
reformation within the church. He overturned the 
whole establishment as completely as He did the 



408 WHAT IS REALITY? 

tables of the money-changers. And to supply its 
place He founded a new church of an entirely differ- 
ent type. 

All the foundations of this new church were prin- 
ciples. As related to the old it was necessarily de- 
structive. It broke through the forms of things to 
rescue the truths that they were hiding. The Jewish 
sabbath was one of the most deeply intrenched and 
carefully guarded of all the old institutions. It 
had become the chief depository and stronghold of 
Jewish superstitions. Christ abrogated the Jewish 
sabbath ; and to take its place He left only a prin- 
ciple. Having broken down the old, He instituted 
no exact rules or restrictions with regard to the 
new. He only laid down the principle that the 
sabbath was to be adjusted to man, not man to the 
sabbath. 

When He was preparing to leave his work in the 
hands of others, He instituted certain rites which 
should help to perpetuate his teachings and unite his 
followers. What were they like ? The Lord's Sup- 
per was in one sense a continuation of the Passover. 
But it was a continuation that served to emphasize 
the dissimilarity of the two dispensations. The direc- 
tions with regard to the observance of the old rite 
were exceedingly minute and exact. The selection 
of the materials to be used, the manner of prepara- 
tion, the time when it should be eaten, the clothes 
to be worn and the manner of eating, — all these 
particulars must be rigorously observed. The eating 
of unleavened bread must continue seven days : " for 
whosoever eateth leavened bread from the first day 



THE INFALLIBLE CHURCH. 409 

until the seventh day, that soul shall be cut off from 
Israel." 1 

The rite of the new church was as simple, as unex- 
acting, as the other was elaborate and burdensome. 
The materials used were taken from the table where 
Christ had just supped with his disciples. There was 
no specification as to the times or the manner of its 
observance. The only direction was : " This do, as 
oft as ye do it, in remembrance of me." It was the 
same with the rite of baptism. The apostles were 
told to baptize those who were brought into the new 
church. But no directions were given as to the time 
or manner in which it should be done. And when 
some of the early Christians began to attach an exag- 
gerated importance to the ceremony, we find Paul 
thanking God that he baptized only a very few of 
them, and expressing contempt for the rite as com- 
pared with the preaching of the gospel. 

In short, the Founder of Christianity sent his fol- 
lowers forth unburdened by institutions or restric- 
tions. He left them free to organize themselves, in 
one way or in a variety of ways, as expediency should 
dictate ; and they demonstrated their continuity with 
Him by separating themselves more and more from 
the entanglements of the Jewish church. 

To recur to the analogy of the last chapter, Chris- 
tianity was a religion of an exceedingly generalized 
type. It was capable of giving rise to innumerable 
specialized types without losing itself in any one of 
them, and without exhausting its originating power. 
The Church of Rome, in so far as it was informed by 

1 Exodus xii. 15. 



410 WHAT IS REALITY? 

the principles of Christ, was a continuity of Chris- 
tianity. But its absolutism was the continuity of that 
specializing tendency that works both in nature and 
in human affairs for the production of definite and 
unprogressive forms. This tendency is not in itself 
an evil. Up to a certain point, the conservation of 
type is no less essential to evolution than the progres- 
sive principle of variation. Definite, unprogressive 
forms have their day of usefulness and supremacy. 
But their supremacy becomes the reverse of useful 
when it opposes itself to all further progress. To 
quote Bagehot once more : " The whole history of 
civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions 
which were invaluable at first and deadly afterwards. 
Progress would not have been the rarity it is, if the 
early food had not been the late poison." 1 

1 Physics and Politics, p. 74. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

THE INFALLIBLE BOOK. 

In this chapter I shall try to convince the reader 
that the Sacred Scriptures are not, as regards method, 
the antithesis of the revelation given in nature ; but 
that they are, on the contrary, adjusted to the con- 
stitution of the human soul in the same proportions. 
We have seen that man is so related to his physical 
environment that mere contact, the opening of his 
eyes and the instinctive movement of his limbs, puts 
him in possession of a number of valuable funda- 
mental facts with regard to it. There is, in short, a 
large bestowal of knowledge as a free gift. But sup- 
plementary to this we found ample provisions made 
for development by means of glimpses of knowledge, 
half-truths, suggestions, that stimulate the imagina- 
tion and act as a continual incentive to intellectual 
effort and practical experiment. 

If, therefore, a book is to be made the medium of 
a special communication to man, we should anticipate 
that something the same proportions between truths 
absolutely given and truths indistinctly outlined 
would be observed. We should expect to find in it 
a ministration to present wants, and also a ministra- 
tion to the requirements of future development. 
We should look for the enunciation of certain ulti- 



412 WHAT IS REALITY t 

mate facts that should stand out with great clearness. 
And, on the other hand, we should expect these to be 
accompanied by many secondary aspects of truth. 

These expectations are fulfilled in the proportions 
of Scriptural truth. The following are some of the 
fundamental facts : There is one God. He is holy, 
but He loves men. He is just, but He is merciful. 
His laws are inexorable, but He forgives. He is in- 
finite, but He can and does dwell in the human spirit. 
Complementary to these we have certain ultimate 
facts with regard to man. He is made in the image 
of God. But he has not yet realized all that is in- 
volved in these words. He is in many respects the 
moral contradiction of the ideal man. It is the great 
end of his existence to attain to this ideal. He can 
and ought to realize it, but he cannot. He can do 
nothing without the cooperation of the Spirit of God. 
The Spirit has worked with man in the past, though 
he knew it not. God has now made man his conscious 
associate. If man wills to enter into this relation- 
ship, his sins may be forgiven, his disabilities may 
be overcome, and the goal of life may be reached. 

I do not assume to have exhausted the list of ulti- 
mate facts, but the above are sufficient to illustrate 
what I mean by the clearness of the positions of 
Scripture. Like the general impressions which all 
men receive from nature, they afford a basis for ac- 
tion ; but they are not readily harmonized. They 
contain elements of contradiction, which, all through 
the ages, have exercised severely the speculative 
and moral reason of man. They have successfully 
drawn the imagination, man's creative faculty, into 



THE INFALLIBLE BOOK. 413 

realms transcending sight, and at the same time they 
have made it possible for him to dwell and work in 
these regions without utterly losing his way. As 
speculation in other departments is continually called 
back to start afresh from the necessary postulates of 
thought, so here we have secure outposts from which 
to take anew our departure when involved in diffi- 
culties. 

What, now, do we find as to the Scriptural envi- 
ronment of these ultimate truths ? First, it is of a 
most varied nature. All the literary forms in which 
the thought of man has been cast are represented. 
We have history, poetry, prophecy, hymns, prayers, 
addresses, proverbs, allegories, teaching of the most 
simple kind, transcendental philosophy. Its appeals 
are made from many points of view and adjusted 
to the ever-varying emotions of man. It argues, it 
illustrates, it persuades, it commands, it threatens, 
it entices. It comes to us through men of great 
diversity of character and temperament. 

Secondly, because of this variety, there are many 
things in it difficult to be understood. As related 
to the great spiritual facts with w T hich it is asso- 
ciated, this environment is just what the materials of 
the external revelation given in nature are to the 
ultimate data of thought given in consciousness. 
Every part of nature is fitted to throw some light 
upon its great problems, but the many rays from 
different centres so cross and intersect each other 
that the first effect is to render our views confused 
and hard to reconcile. Just so the setting in which 
we find the great truths of Scripture is certainly 



414 WHAT IS REALITY ? 

calculated to throw light upon them ; but the light 
comes from so many points that the first effect of 
an effort to combine these is not the simplification 
but rather the complication of the problems be- 
fore us. 

All that can be affirmed as to the deceitful nature 
of the testimony which we receive from the external 
world through our organs of sense may be as truly 
affirmed of that which comes to us from the Bible, 
when considered as a book every part of which has 
an equally direct bearing on the reader. And the 
amount of thought which has been expended for the 
attainment of a perception of unity in the Bible has 
probably been equal to that expended in any depart- 
ment of the physical sciences for the achievement of 
a like result. The conception, moreover, upon which 
we mainly rely to justify our claim as to its unity 
is just that which underlies the hypothesis of evolu- 
tion ; though, as regards the Scripture, it has had 
an independent origin, growing out of the patient 
study of the facts and methods of the book itself. 

We find the same God in the events of the Old 
Testament history that we find in the lofty concep- 
tions of the prophets and in the fuller revelation of 
Christ, because we recognize the principle of growth. 
And, further, because we perceive all through this 
history of a revelation two motives at work which, 
while constantly reacting upon and antagonizing 
each other, yet conduce to progress. There is that 
response on the part of the great Educator that 
meets the present want; there is also a response 
which has a tendency to change the want by elevat- 



THE INFALLIBLE BOOK. 415 

ing it. There is teaching adjusted to existing low 
conceptions and narrowness of view; there is also 
teaching adjusted to the higher possible soul that 
is to be. In a general way, the priestly element, 
conducing to permanency of type, embodies the 
one ; the prophetic element, productive of variation 
and progress, supplies the other. All through the 
course of this history individuals, far in advance of 
their age, anticipate the more highly evolved type 
of spirituality that is to emerge in the fullness of 
time ; and their inspired utterances presage the 
decay and disappearance of conceptions that have 
only subserved the necessities of infancy. 

But does an evolution in the old dispensation 
afford any ground for expecting an evolution be- 
yond it ? Is not this very phrase, the " fullness of 
time," an indication that the course of progressive 
revelation was completed in Christ and his apostles? 
For an answer to this question we must investigate 
not only the later revelation, but also the character- 
istics of the society to which it came. The phrase 
" fullness of time " may as legitimately refer to one 
important epoch in the course of evolution as to an 
assumed termination of it. If to a termination, we 
should expect to find a society of an advanced and 
homogeneous spiritual development, and adjusted to 
this a revelation calculated to subserve not so much 
the ends of progress as of stability. The forms of 
it would be exact, the depositories of it would be 
carefully guarded. Its doctrines would be system- 
atized. It would give men developed, harmonized 
truth, rather than germs of truth that should ex- 



416 WHAT IS REALITY? 

pand in the growing life of progressive souls. In 
such a revelation we should expect to find only one 
of the two motives which work together and offset 
each other in the Old Testament. The prophetic 
element would be wanting. 

It will not, I think, be difficult to show that our 
Saviour was both priest and prophet. Indeed, when 
we look for evidence of this, the prophetic, uplifting, 
disturbing element is at first sight far more appar- 
ent than the restful ministration to present wants. 
For evidence of the latter we may refer to the mir- 
acles, which as signs and wonders were calculated 
to gain immediate acceptance for spiritual truths ; 
and we may remind ourselves that " He had com- 
passion " on the people and taught them " many 
things " that were not recorded. But in the great 
body of his recorded teachings we recognize the 
prophet speaking in the language of metaphor and 
hyperbole, scattering seeds of truth that were to 
develop with the developing kingdom of heaven. 
He was a perpetual enigma to those who surrounded 
Him. Though He came for the purpose of saving 
men by instructing them, and though He nowhere 
contemplates a salvation that works otherwise than 
through the conscious apprehension and appropria- 
tion of spiritual truth, He addressed himself to the 
generation that received Him in riddles. 

In his private conversations and in his public dis- 
courses it is the same. To all his auditors He seems 
to be saying, " Go thou and learn what that mean- 
eth." His benedictions are startling : " Blessed are 
the poor." "Blessed are they that hunger and 



THE INFALLIBLE BOOK. 417 

thirst." " Blessed are they that mourn." He lays 
down principles and illustrates them with concrete 
examples ; but often the illustrations are as hard to 
understand as the principles. Laws of conduct are 
given without modification, and in such absolute, 
extreme forms as to make them seem the contradic- 
tion of reason : " Take no thought for the morrow." 
" Resist not evil." And the amazement of his 
hearers w^as probably in no wise lessened when He 
illustrated the first precept by an allusion to the 
lilies that " toil not, neither do they spin," and the 
other by the special injunction, " Whosoever shall 
smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the 
other also." Christianity as developed has taken 
neither of these commands literally. It has looked 
for truths underlying them that could find expres- 
sion in and through the organization of society on a 
rational basis. 

In some cases, where we might be tempted to 
insist on a literal interpretation, we are debarred 
from such an error by a counter utterance which 
obliges us to rise above the letter to a higher con- 
ception. M Whosoever will confess me before men, 
him will I confess also before my Father which is 
in heaven." And, on the other hand, " Many will 
say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not 
prophesied in thy name ? and in thy name have cast 
out devils ? and in thy name done many wonderful 
works ? And then will I profess unto them, I never 
knew you : depart from me, ye that work iniquity." 
That construction of Christ's method which, in the 
phrase of an eminent critic, defines its leading char- 



418 WHAT IS BEAUTY f 

acteristic as " sweet reasonableness " l seems the 
purest irony when applied to any of the conversa- 
tions of Christ with those who gave him a puzzled 
attention. 

Let us take two instances, in both of which men 
who had been roused by the contemplation of his 
miracles sought a further knowledge of Him. Soon 
after the feeding of the five thousand an expectant 
audience of the common people surrounded Him, 
intent on loaves and fishes. He does not descend 
to their level, but discourses in a realm so beyond 
their present comprehension as to be like a foreign 
language to them. They try to put a meaning into 
his words by a reference to the bread from heaven 
which Moses gave ; but this is not the clew. He 
tells them that Moses gave them not the true bread 
from heaven, " for the bread of God is he that 
cometh down from heaven and giveth light unto the 
world." They are not yet discouraged, but answer, 
" Lord, evermore give us this bread." But a harder 
saying is to follow : " I am the bread of life." Can 
we wonder when we read, "The Jews then mur- 
mured at Him, because He said, I am the bread that 
came down from heaven " ? Or, further on, when 
He added, " The bread that I will give is my flesh, 
which I will give for the life of the world," that the 
Jews strove among themselves, saying, "How can 
this man give us his flesh to eat ? " Or, still fur- 
ther, when He said, " He that eateth my flesh, and 
drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him," 
can we regard it as strange that many of his dis- 
1 Literature and Dogma. 



THE INFALLIBLE BOOK. 419 

ciples said, " This is an hard saying ; who can hear 
it?" Or, as the result of this conversation, that 
"many of his disciples went back, and walked no 
more with Him " ? 

The interview with Nicodemus gives us an ex- 
ample of the method of the great Teacher with an 
educated, thoughtful, sincere inquirer. Nicodemus 
approaches Christ with the fullest recognition of 
his ability to instruct him, and of the divine char- 
acter of his mission. How does Christ receive him? 
Does He begin to explain himself to the Jewish 
ruler ? Does He unfold systematically the plan of 
salvation and indicate his personal relation to the 
prophecies of the Old Testament ? On the con- 
trary, without preface, He utters a truth which mys- 
tifies the inquirer as he was never mystified before : 
" Except a man be born again, he cannot see the 
kingdom of God." Nicodemus is staggered, but 
the Teacher simply adds, " The wind bloweth where 
it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but 
canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it 
goeth : so is every one that is born of the Spirit." 
The result of the interview is just what we might 
expect. The inquirer goes away not satisfied, not 
restful, with doubts dissipated and the spirit of in- 
quiry narcotized. He goes dazed and perplexed, 
saying to himself, " How can these things be ? " 

It is needless to specify further. " Without a 
parable spake He not unto them." To his disciples, 
it is true, He explained, to some extent, the meaning 
of his parables, and instructed them as to the growth 
of the kingdom of heaven, but their answers, even 



420 WHAT IS REALITYf 

in his final conversations with them, show how little 
they apprehended his meaning. He himself alludes 
in one of these interviews to the veiled character of 
his instructions : " These things have I spoken unto 
you in parables ; but the time cometh when I shall 
no more speak unto you in parables, but I shall 
show you plainly of the Father." How shall we 
understand this " show you plainly " ? It may be 
taken as an express promise to the disciples that 
with them the development of truth is to come to 
an end ; that absolute clearness is to take the place 
of mysteries in their teaching; and that those who 
come after them will have a body of truth delivered 
once for all, needing and admitting of no further 
elucidation or development. 

But such an interpretation tallies not with the 
facts. The apostles do begin the work of develop- 
ing and systematizing the truth that has been sown 
in their hearts ; and there is abundant evidence that 
in these efforts they were aided by the Holy Spirit, 
and guided " into all truth," not in the absolute 
sense of being permitted to exhaust its meaning, but 
in a sense related to their own needs and to the 
needs of their special environment. Many of their 
teachings had primary reference to the particular 
communities to which they were severally addressed ; 
and these must be understood in and through their 
relation to the outward circumstances, the stage of 
development, the habits of thought, and the precon- 
ceptions of those whose spiritual welfare they were 
designed to promote. The writings of different 
apostles are therefore developments in different di- 



THE INFALLIBLE BOOK. 421 

rections. They give us aspects of the many-sided 
truth ; and history has shown us plainly enough that 
in the effort to synthesize these aspects of truth dif- 
ferent classes of minds have reached widely different 
results. 

Through all the writings of the apostles, more- 
over, there is manifested a conception of themselves 
and of their work which is plainly at variance with 
the claim of a completed revelation. Paul counts 
not himself to have apprehended, but forgetting those 
things which are behind he reaches forth unto those 
things which are before. " Now I know in part ; but 
then shall I know even as also I am known." Their 
work is ever represented as one of edification ; there 
is to be development, increase in the knowledge of 
God, a growing up into Christ of the whole body 
fitly joined together and compacted by that which 
every joint supplieth. Churches are reproached for 
continuing on a lower plane, so that they require to 
be taught again the first principles of the oracles of 
God, and because, not having used their opportuni- 
ties for growth, they require to be fed as babes, when 
they ought to be capable of receiving the strong meat 
of a more advanced revelation. In short, there is no 
indication of a completed development. The work 
of the Spirit, so far as revelation is concerned, is in 
its first, though most important, stage. Many strands 
of truth have been drawn out, but the pattern into 
which they are to be wrought is suggested rather than 
completed. 

But what, then, we may be asked, is the meaning 
of the claim of infallibility so often made by those 



422 WHAT IS REALITY? 

who take their stand upon the Bible as the sole 
source of the Christian revelation? My answer 
would be that, as applied to the great mass of Bibli- 
cal teaching, the claim has no meaning, though its 
origin is not difficult to trace. When truth passes 
from one phase of development into another higher 
up on the scale, it often happens that features are 
preserved that have no vital connection with the 
organs of the later type, and which as evolution pro- 
ceeds declare more and more plainly their useless 
and obstructive nature. Such a survival was com- 
pulsory circumcision in branches of the early Chris- 
tian church. And such I take to be the nature of 
the Protestant claim of infallibility applied to the 
Bible as a whole. Associated with its theory of 
Scripture, Protestantism has carried along a concep- 
tion that has had its rise in a view of revelation which 
is in some respects the. contradiction of its own. I 
mean the view which makes an association of living 
men the one and only channel of reliable communica- 
tion between God and the great body of believers. 

To put it in another way, the idea of infallibility 
originated, not as a deduction from recognized char- 
acteristics of the Bible, but, on the contrary, as a 
deduction from what the Bible was clearly recognized 
not to be ; a deduction from its supposed deficiencies. 
This led to the creation of an extra-Biblical author- 
ity, assumed to be infallible, to supply the lacking- 
element. 

The Church of Rome has always recognized those 
characteristics of the written revelation to which I 
have called attention. And, while emphasizing the 



THE INFALLIBLE BOOK. 423 

certainty and necessity of development, it has insisted 
on the insufficiency of the Bible, in connection with 
the ordinary influences of the Spirit, to conduct that 
development to higher results. Therefore, since no- 
thing but division and ultimate unbelief can be the 
result of a Christianity that rests its claims solely on 
the written revelation, a supreme authority, ruling 
by divine right, is said to be an absolute necessity. 
"In proportion, then," says Dr. Newman, "as we 
find, in matter of fact, that the inspired volume is not 
adapted or intended to subserve that purpose (infal- 
lible guidance), are we forced to revert to that living 
and present guide. . . . We feel a need, and she 
alone of all things under heaven supplies it. We 
are told that God has spoken. Where? In a 
book ? We have tried it, and it disappoints ; it dis- 
appoints us, that most holy and blessed gift, not 
from fault of its own, but because it is used for a 
purpose for which it was not given. The Ethiopian's 
reply, when St. Philip asked if he understood what 
he was reading, is the voice of nature : ' How can 
I unless some man shall guide me ? ' The Church 
undertakes that office ; she does what none else can 
do, and this is the secret of her power." 1 

Now when Protestantism attempts to gain this same 
kind of power by setting up the claim of infallibility, 
extended to the Bible as a whole, it takes a position 
that seems to me quite as untenable as Dr. Newman 
has represented it to be. If the apostles were infal- 
lible, in the Roman or in any other sense, they were 
so only to those to whose wants their teachings were 
1 Development of Christian Doctrine, p. 88. 



424 WHAT IS BEALITY? 

originally adjusted; they cannot be to those who 
have developed under widely different circumstances 
and for whom their teachings must be readjusted. 
This we in substance admit whenever we essay an 
explanation of difficult points in their writings, and 
are tolerant of one another's opinions. And, as mat- 
ter of fact, this claim of Protestants has always, in 
practice, been transferred from the Bible itself to 
systems of theology assumed to be necessary and 
exact deductions from it. 

Am I then saying that the revelations that come 
to us from the sacred book are as uncertain as those 
which come to us direct from nature, or from the 
human expounders of nature ? I answer, they have 
like them a large element of uncertainty, and like 
them a much smaller element of truth that may be 
clearly stated, on which we can confidently stand and 
work. If, confining the tremendous word infallibil- 
ity to the one all-wise Being, we content ourselves 
with the claim that the Bible is a collection of writ- 
ings specially superintended by the Holy Spirit, and 
specially coordinated by that superintendence to the 
spiritual requirements of man in all ages, that the 
forms in which it is presented are those best calcu- 
lated to promote our spiritual growth, and, further, 
that it will accomplish for mankind that which it was 
intended to accomplish in so far only as those to 
whom it comes are faithful in the study of its truths 
and in efforts to realize them through practice ; if, 
I say, we are satisfied to rest in this conception, 
we have a revelation that is in harmony with the 
world process, and which appeals to us as a homo- 



THE INFALLIBLE BOOK. 425 

geneous part of a consistent scheme of human educa- 
tion. 

Let us consider a little more particularly our affir- 
mation with regard to the necessity of practice for 
the development of revealed truth. 

Effort, as related to the truth of God's word, 
reaches out in three directions, corresponding to 
man's threefold consciousness. There must be intel- 
lectual, social, spiritual activity. There must be 
doctrine, life, and communion with God. This last- 
mentioned activity, which includes prayer, is depen- 
dent on the other two for its health. Just as nerve 
force in the physical organism is dependent upon the 
muscular and alimentary systems, so our relations to 
Scriptural truth are normal in proportion as thought 
and social intercourse are normal. Or, to put it in 
another but cognate form, the truest conception of 
God's relation to us and of our relations to Him can 
be attained only when reason and experience react 
freely upon each other in the application and devel- 
opment of the inspired writings. 

When reason acts alone, and assumes to present 
to the intellect in an absolute systematic form those 
intuitions of God that have come to us clothed in the 
lofty utterances of the prophets, it falls into error as 
certainly as when it commits itself to independent 
theorizing in any other department. A theology 
that strives to translate the figures of revelation into 
the terms of a logical formula arrives at substan- 
tially the same results that were attained by philoso- 
phers under paganism. The tendency is always to 
some form of pantheism or dualism. This is not the 



426 WHAT IS REALITY? 

fault of the data, nor the fault of the reason ; it is 
the result of a false method, — of the application of 
reason to the working-out of problems which it can- 
not by itself master. 

But what kind of results do we achieve by the true 
method, — that which, consciously or unconsciously, 
bends from logic to the necessities of human life ? 
Do we reach a perfected final system by its use? 
We certainly do not, any more than in the develop- 
ment of morals. The systematized form in the one 
case as in the other is only an approximation to the 
truth. It is necessarily one-sided, because it bears the 
impress of the imperfectly developed society to the 
wants of which it is adapted. Those who have 
framed systems of practical theology have, more or 
less designedly, proportioned them to the real or 
supposed needs of the society in which they found 
themselves. This was unavoidable ; it was useful, 
but it could not lead to anything absolute. 

A similar adjustment to the needs of society has 
always characterized the evolution of morals. Some 
one virtue, like loyalty to the state is, at a given 
stage in a nation's growth, necessarily paramount ; 
and as a consequence other virtues, in so far as they 
have obtained recognition, are subordinate. That is, 
they are emphasized or depressed just to that degree 
which the interests of the leading virtue seem to 
demand. Thus from a specific kind of virtuous liv- 
ing an ideal of virtue is formed, — an ideal that 
necessarily differs greatly from another, perhaps 
equally true one, the abstract of a society fashioned 
by different outward conditions. This thought has 



THE INFALLIBLE BOOK. 427 

been admirably stated by Lecky : " Although it can- 
not be said that any virtue is the negative of another, 
it is undoubtedly true that virtues are naturally 
grouped according to principles of affinity or congru- 
ity, which are essential to the unity of the type. 
The heroical, the amiable, the industrial, the in- 
tellectual virtues form in this manner distinct 
groups ; and in some cases the development of one 
group is incompatible, not indeed with the existence, 
but with the prominence of others." 1 In early ages 
the heroic or military type would in most cases be 
the prevailing one. 

Just in the same way attempts to systematize the- 
ology, to set forth the mutual relation of its truths, 
in forms that should serve the needs of the church 
militant, at different stages of its career, have in 
every case produced an emphasized development of 
some one aspect of God's character and a corre- 
sponding subordination of other attributes. But the 
tendency to regard such an adjustment of inspired 
truth as perfect and final is at times irresistible. 
Hostile influences which threaten its overthrow or 
its modification act as a solidifying press to harden 
into permanent forms combinations of truth that 
are only relatively true. Custom helps to drape 
these forms with the semblance of divine authority, 
and surrounds them with the woes that stand sen- 
tinel over the transgression of the moral law. 

But the Bible contains within itself vital princi- 
ples of growth ; and these when times are suitable 
have power to break through the deposits of custom 

1 History of European Morals, vol. i. p. 153. 



428 WHAT IS REALITY? 

and authority, be they never so deeply incrusted. 
The penetrating, wide-reaching morality of the New 
Testament, slowly and imperfectly as it has realized 
itself in the world, yet evermore presses for realiza- 
tion. For instance, the duty of loving one's neighbor 
and even one's enemy, of forgiving till seventy times 
seven, and on the other hand the wickedness of a 
vindictive spirit, the depravity of an egoism that 
is indifferent to the sufferings of others, or that 
knowingly makes use of them for interest or self- 
glorification, — these truths continually urged upon 
the attention have resulted in a profound modifica- 
tion of our institutions, and in a still more marked 
elevation of our ideals of virtue as between man and 
man. The mind that has been formed on Christian 
conceptions is outraged at the commission of acts of 
cruelty and injustice that in a former age would 
have excited no attention. And the reaction which 
this change of view produces upon our thought of 
God is as necessary as it is inevitable. 

I say it is necessary, because otherwise we are 
threatened with the same gulf between morality and 
God that in the highest classic thought made a be- 
lief in the traditional gods impossible. If an au- 
thoritative theology takes its immovable stand upon 
a conception of God lower than the highest moral 
ideal of a community, it loses, and ought to lose, the 
support of the best part of that community. It is 
not only deficient, it is a positive and perennial 
source of degeneration. It works for immorality 
and irreligion. It stands in the same relation to 
the moral ideal that the low conceptions of the peo- 



^ 



THE INFALLIBLE BOOK. 429 

pie that knew not Jehovah bore to the higher 
thought of the prophets. 

But are we then to give up the God of the Scrip- 
tures ? Not so, we are to search them anew in the 
light of our acquired experience. And the result 
will be this : when we seek for Him with all the 
heart we shall find there the God of our moral 
ideal. We shall discover that we have been in the 
habit of reading the Bible through the medium of 
a system of doctrine elaborated from it to meet the 
real or supposed wants of another age. Passages 
not in harmony with this have appealed to eyes that 
see not and to ears that hear not. After a little 
examination they have been disregarded, classed as 
things hard to be understood, pitched as it were into 
the mind's waste-basket. But now the things hard 
to be understood become luminous, they expand and 
support each other, they develop under the ardor 
of pursuit and the fascination of discovery ; and 
very probably the impetus acquired will cause the 
awakened mind to overshoot the mark. But so 
long as the principle of progress through the free 
play of thought and experience in the development 
of the written word is adhered to, this extreme is 
sure of correction. 

But it will be said, " This plan of interpreting 
the Bible through experience is only another name 
for finding our own thoughts in it, making it mean 
what it pleases us to have it mean." If the demand 
of the highest moral ideal developed under the in- 
spiration of Christianity is identical with that which 
we desire to find in the Bible, the criticism is a 



gm x 



430 WHAT IS BEAUTY t 



justification of the method ; if not, it is irrelevant. 
And further, it must be said that no system of 
theology ever has been or can be formed that is not 
open to this same objection. Every scheme of doc- 
trine assuming to be drawn from the Bible has been 
dominated by the moral ideal of its age, and more 
or less consciously adjusted to it. And, when the 
advocates of a creed that insists upon the literal- 
ness of those figures of Scripture which present God 
in the most awful but according to human standards 
immoral light justify this insistence on the ground 
of the necessity of this presentation as a stimulus to 
the fears of men, they ground their interpretation 
of Scripture upon this very principle. They find in 
the Bible that which the interests of men, in their 
view, require them to find. They elevate one doc- 
trine and depress another as their experience dic- 
tates. 

But is there any Scriptural warrant for this coor- 
dination of experience with reason in the study of 
the truths of revelation ? It seems to me that such 
an employment of experience is not only permitted 
by Christ, but that it is specially prescribed by Him 
as the indispensable and necessary organ of truth. 
He does not ignore the intellect. His own dis- 
courses and those of the apostles powerfully evoke 
the reason and the imagination. But for the regu- 
lative, modifying, confirming principle He directs 
us to the concrete embodiment of doctrine in life. 
" If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know 
of the teaching." For the proof of his own genu- 
ineness He appealed to the harmony of his works 



THE INFALLIBLE BOOK. 481 

with those of God. " My Father worketh hitherto 
and I work." " If I do not the works of my Fa- 
ther believe me not." " I am the way, the truth, 
and the life." 

Still more clearly does the experience of a pro- 
gressive life appear as the measure and test of doc- 
trine when we consider the human embodiments 
through which God has authorized us to study Him. 
He has pointed us to a human relationship as afford- 
ing the most complete expression of himself as re- 
lated to us. The varied and apparently conflicting 
aspects of his character that no logical process can 
harmonize, that must ever antagonize each other in 
any purely intellectual portrayal of his personality, 
admit of a perfect synthesis in and through our 
knowledge of fatherhood. An ideal fatherhood can 
no more be exhaustively described in scientific terms 
than the character of God can be described. No 
one can know it except through experience. It is a 
concrete idea that can be reduced to its elements 
only by the destruction of that which is most vital 
in it. 

Now, is this conception of fatherhood a fixed, 
perfected thing, or is it a moving, developing thing ? 
We have only to look about us to answer the ques- 
tion. And a glance backward into history will 
show us that the word " father " has represented to 
men in different stages of society conceptions very 
wide apart. In the old Roman ideal we have the 
most striking portrayal of this relationship as abso- 
lute sovereignty. It was the prerogative of a Ro- 
man father to accept or to reject his legitimate chil- 



432 WHAT IS REALITY? 

dren at birth. If he received a son, he received 
him as his property. While the father lived the 
son continued to be a minor. He could own no- 
thing. He could acquire nothing. If a will was 
made in his favor by a stranger, his father received 
the legacy. The father could at any time sell the 
son, if it pleased him to do so. The father was 
the judge of the son, and from his jurisdiction there 
was no appeal. As judge he might condemn him 
to death. 1 The same conception of the absolute 
property of a father in his child is forcibly illus- 
trated in the history of Abraham. That the nat- 
ural love of a father's heart existed in the Roman 
and in the patriarch we may not doubt. But it is 
not difficult to see how this would be obscured and 
in many cases lost sight of under so one-sided a 
conception. It was a condition of things most favor- 
able to the production of filial fear and cold rever- 
ence, but love had little chance to grow in such an 
atmosphere. " Of all the forms of virtue," says 
Lecky, "filial affection is perhaps that which ap- 
pears most rarely in Roman history." 2 

Now, it is true that departure from this primitive 
conception is not certainly in the line of progress to 
something better. This rigid, severe type has its 
justification in nature. It is a true development of 
one side of fatherhood, one that was not confined 
to ancient times, but which, in spirit, continually 
reappears in history. A change from it may be of 
the nature of extreme reaction. There is a soft, 

1 The Ancient City, Book II. eliap. viii. 

2 History of European Morals, vol. i. p. 299. 



THE INFALLIBLE BOOK. 433 

limp type of paternity which lacks every element 
of morality. What is to prevent men from taking 
this as the expression of the Almighty Father ? If 
a special confirmation from Scripture is sought for, 
it can be found. By the segregation of some of the 
most beautiful passages of the Bible, like the para- 
ble of the Prodigal Son and the 103d Psalm, plau- 
sible data are at hand for the portraiture of an easy- 
going, weakly forgiving father. 

How is it, then, that so fundamental and all- 
determining an element of truth as the conception 
of God has been committed to such a shifting and 
uncertain embodiment as that of fatherhood ? We 
should indeed be lost in a puzzle of uncertainty 
were it not for the other principle of progressive 
knowledge. It is only when the constructive reason 
brings together all the rays of divine manifestation 
and passes them through the authorized medium 
of the purest human relationship that we arrive at 
the closest approximation to the knowledge of God's 
character that is possible at any given stage of social 
development. The severer aspects cannot be left 
out of the conception. Nature and revelation unite 
to compel their inclusion. And the course of devel- 
opment downward in any society that ignores them 
is the demonstration of the fatuity of the one-sided 
construction. But these severer aspects reach us in 
a radically changed form when they come through 
the medium of a father's love. This does not, in- 
deed, explain everything satisfactorily to the intel- 
lect, but it takes the crude, hard, extreme con- 
ceptions which the intellect presents, sifts, fuses, 



434 WHAT IS REALITY t 

purifies, recreates these, and gives them back in a 
concrete, living form, that we can accept. 

There is no end to the interaction of these two 
organs of truth. Living experience is continually- 
carrying us to a position in advance of our formu- 
lated doctrines and compels their modification. But 
revelation as interpreted by reason, though flexible, 
is not indefinitely so. It is not mere material to be 
worked upon. It is also powerfully formative and 
controlling. Neither element is independent of the 
other. But by their continual reaction upon each 
other they bring us into an ever wider and clearer 
consciousness of God as our Father and infinitely 
wise Educator, working about us and within us, — 
a God hating iniquity, but whose mercy is over all 
his works ; — a Father whose very essence is love, 
but who is none the less unflinching in the applica- 
tion of discipline. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

MIKACLES. 

We have already called attention to the fact that 
the doctrine of evolution has transformed our concep- 
tion of the course of nature. From thinking of it as 
a mechanical routine, we have come to regard it as a 
succession of new departures, of surprises, of hitherto 
unheard-of developments. These are from our point 
of view miracles. That is, they are wonderful, inex- 
plicable works. They seem at first sight to be ac- 
complished in opposition to the previously estab- 
lished order of things. But further investigation 
inclines us to explain them as modifications of that 
order ; — modifications brought about by an inventive 
mind working for ends. 

This is a perfectly intelligible and reasonable inter- 
pretation of the world. For the wonders that man 
has wrought by isolating, combining, concentrating, 
attenuating, imprisoning, and directing the forces 
of nature should make it easy to believe that the 
mind which compasses the whole of that of which we 
know only the rudiments can bring to pass for the 
accomplishment of his own ends specializations of 
force which transcend the limits of our knowledge. 

When, therefore, we come to the consideration of 
those particular works that are held to have been 



436 WHAT IS REALITY f 

performed in the interests of a special revelation to 
man, we Lave nothing to do with the question as to 
the reasonableness of believing in what seems to be 
a reversal of the order of nature. Having once rec- 
ognized the existence of a Being who performs such 
works, the only question can be as to the probability 
of his having wrought this particular class of won- 
ders for the accomplishment of the end specified. 

These works are said to have been wrought for the 
purpose of convincing men of certain great truths. 
Now, the importance of the truths communicated is 
a sufficient warrant for the performance of extraor- 
dinary works. But how does this method of convin- 
cing men stand related to the plan of self-education 
that seems to have been marked out for the race on 
such an extensive scale ? If the establishment of an 
infallible church whose proclamations shall override 
reason and dictate articles of belief is an unlikely 
feature of such a system, is not dictation by means 
of miracles equally, and for the same reason, un- 
likely? Our answer to this question must depend 
very much upon the prominence assigned to mira- 
cles. If they are held to be the sole or chief sup- 
ports of our belief in spiritual realities; if their 
action upon the minds of men is assumed to have 
been substituted for and to have superseded the 
agencies hitherto relied upon, there is good reason 
for looking upon them with suspicion. They have 
none of the characteristics of the system. Their 
methods are foreign to its methods. Their effect 
upon the minds of men is the reverse of that pro- 
duced by antecedent agencies. Instead of quicken- 



MIRACLES. 437 

ing and stimulating the higher faculties they arrest 
their development and deaden them. 

But if, on the other hand, they are regarded as 
occupying a distinctly subordinate and provisional 
place in the system, if they are mere adjuncts of it, 
we may arrive at a very different conclusion. 

Which of these views is the true one ? 

I believe that a candid examination of the teach- 
ings of Christ and his apostles will show that they 
assigned to miracles (considered simply as wonderful 
works) a very subordinate position. I say consid- 
ered simply as wonderful works, for the miracles of 
Christ were also parables, weighted with a profound 
moral significance which it is the task of the race and 
of individuals to fathom by a progressive realization. 
But as signs and wonders they were, for the most 
part, adaptations, concessions to the attitude of 
minds not yet sufficiently developed to grasp high 
spiritual truths. They were supports to those who 
were young in the faith, in the midst of a hostile 
environment. 

In the exercise of his wonder-working power our 
Lord was largely influenced by the mental attitude 
of those with whom He came in contact. In the 
great majority of cases it was elicited in response 
to a measure of faith already existing. It was his 
answer to the cry " Lord, I believe, help thou mine 
unbelief." He uniformly refused those who came in 
a hostile spirit, demanding a sign, and seems to have 
regarded every such challenge as a temptation to fall 
back on lower methods than those which He had 
chosen. He recognized the futility of signs to change 



438 WHAT IS REALITY f 

the heart and the will. "An evil and adulterous 
generation seeketh after a sign." " If they hear not 
Moses and the prophets, neither will they be per- 
suaded though one rose from the dead." He fore- 
warns his disciples that the time is coming when 
their faith will be sorely tried unless it has found 
higher ground than that afforded by miracles. 
" There shall arise false Christs and false prophets, 
and shall show great signs and wonders; so as to 
lead astray, if possible, even the elect." 

He repeatedly signified his relatively low estimate 
of a belief that rested on physical phenomena, and 
his craving for a higher faith in his followers. To 
elicit an expression of such a faith He said to one, 
" Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not be- 
lieve." To his disciples He said, " Believe me that 
I am in the Father and the Father in me : or else 
believe me for the very works' sake." To Thomas, 
believing because he had touched the wounded hands 
and side, He said, " Because thou hast seen me thou 
hast believed : blessed are they that have not seen and 
yet have believed." When about to leave his disci- 
ples He makes to thern this astonishing announce- 
ment : " He that believeth on me, the works that I do 
shall he do also ; and greater works than these shall 
he do." Can we believe that the superiority here 
predicated had reference to the amount and not to the 
quality of the results to be attained? As on a for- 
mer occasion our Saviour had declared the " least in 
the kingdom of heaven " to be greater than John 
the Baptist, so here also did He not point to the 
fact that it was to be the privilege of the disciples, 



MIRACLES. 439 

through the cooperation of the Spirit, to lead men 
to a plane of spiritual life more elevated and more 
stable than could be reached by a mere belief in ex- 
ternal phenomena ? The place assigned to miracles 
by the Apostle Paul is in harmony with this view : 
" And God hath set some in the church, first apostles, 
secondly prophets, thirdly teachers, then miracles." 

Some of the miracles recorded in the Bible are 
signs to the believers of every age, and are pledges 
to all who find their hold on the great facts of Chris- 
tianity strengthened by them. But others were 
specially adapted to the prepossessions of those who 
witnessed them, and are not therefore easily appre- 
hended by men inheriting widely different habits of 
thought. Dr. Newman has called attention to the 
fact that in many cases " miracles which produced a 
rational conviction at the time when they took place 
have ever since proved rather an objection to revela- 
tion than an evidence for it, and have depended on 
the rest for support ; while others, which once were 
of a dubious and perplexing character, have in suc- 
ceeding ages come forward in its defense." 2 

Protestantism has indirectly recognized the pro- 
visional office of miracles by not encouraging the 
expectation of their continuance ; and the analogies 
of history as well as those of physical nature sustain 
a judgment that has been largely instinctive. The 
higher we rise in the scale of creation the more does 
the progressive method declare itself both in the 
history of ideas and of individuals ; and the more 
extended the development in any given case the 
1 Essays on Miracles, p. 9. 



440 WHAT IS REALITY ? 

more numerous and varied are the elements that 
have been successively utilized and outgrown. The 
human infant, capable of an elaborateness of evolu- 
tion in comparison with which the lives of other ani- 
mals seem to be almost stationary, begins its existence 
in a state of absolute dependence. It must be car- 
ried, protected, nourished. It must be led step by 
step till it is able to take care of itself. But what 
is beneficial at this early stage becomes at a later 
one not only unnecessary but positively opposed to 
growth ; and all along the course of its development 
appliances and methods that have been useful are 
left behind. 

The same has been true of ideas. Those that have 
had the most elaborate history, and that still promise 
a future of development, are in many cases those 
which have had the feeblest beginnings. How many 
great truths have had to be first protected by secrecy, 
then fought for, then hedged about by law, then 
fostered and developed by public sentiment, till at 
last they have attained to an independent and secure 
position ! Does not the religious faith of many an 
earnest seeker after truth go through analogous 
stages ? And in all these cases supports that were 
important and necessary to one period of develop- 
ment become cast-off swaddling-clothes to the next. 

Christianity, in its successive metamorphoses, has 
most conspicuously illustrated this principle. At its 
entrance into the world it claimed to be not a new 
religion, but a higher form of one that had known 
a great history. Externally considered, one of the 
most marked of the phenomena attending its advent 



MIRACLES. 441 

was the abandonment of a time-honored rigid shell 
that had protected, but now cramped and smothered 
it. Old traditions, old ceremonies, old requirements, 
old and consecrated places of worship, were left be- 
hind. The things to be destroyed were, to the appre- 
hension of the generation nursed in them, very great, 
very sacred, most essential and indispensable ; while 
those which remained were truly typified by the soft, 
helpless, undeveloped babe lying in the manger at 
Bethlehem. Without a priesthood, without a ritual, 
destitute of prestige, it came to supplant an organ- 
ized form of religion that had all these advantages. 
It came to make a direct appeal to the human reason, 
to establish itself in the hearts and consciences of men, 
to abolish the necessity of human mediation, and to 
bring the individual into direct and living communion 
with God. It essayed to do this by the presentation 
of certain great facts and ideas, the acceptance of 
which would be the first step in its career of conquest. 
But how were these facts to gain acceptance? 
Necessarily not through the ordinary channels of 
human authority and influence ; for one great end 
to be attained was to bring man face to face with 
God, to make him an intelligent agent in that 
transformation by which he passed out of the rela- 
tion of subject into that of sonship, out of that of 
servant into that of friend. The Father must reveal 
himself as speaking directly to the individual. But 
the great facts and ideas to be communicated are 
not self-evident. They do not appeal to the pres- 
ent consciousness of the mass of men ; and by their 
very nature they do not admit of that kind of dem- 



442 WHAT IS REALITY t 

onstration which the truths of science offer. The 
time will come when, accepted and proved in the 
experience of the race, they will speak for them- 
selves. But now it is necessary that signs of their 
divine origin should fill the place ordinarily occu- 
pied by the prestige of a great name. Until these 
spiritual facts can be spiritually attested, it is ex- 
pedient that they should be attested by facts that 
are their analogues in the realm of sensible phe- 
nomena. 

Through a man of humble origin God announces 
the great fact of the forgiveness of sins. When 
one sick of the palsy is laid before Him He utters 
the authoritative and startling proclamation, " Son, 
thy sins be forgiven thee." But to the bystanders 
this seems only blasphemy, until He manifests him- 
self by adding, " That ye may know that the Son of 
man hath j^ower on earth to forgive sins, I say unto 
thee, Arise, and take up thy bed and go thy way 
into thine house." Then, we are told, they " glori- 
fied God." He had spoken to them in a language 
which they understood, by signs that in the current 
thought of the time were the true and infallible ex- 
ponents of the power which He assumed. So, also, 
it was necessary that the great fact of life beyond 
the grave should be signalized to the apprehension 
of the senses by the resurrection, and that the real- 
ity of the mysterious indwelling of God in the hu- 
man soul, and of his cooperative working with the 
individual, should be indorsed by the external phe- 
nomena of the day of Pentecost. 

But the great end for which these truths were 



MIRACLES. 443 

introduced into the scheme of things could not be 
accomplished by any such means. Had they been 
lodged far more securely and more widely in the 
minds of that generation it would not have been 
accomplished. For these truths are to be growing 
factors in the development of man, — in the devel- 
opment of his reason, of his spiritual life, of his 
whole being. They are the starting points of a 
new era. They are to be progressively apprehended. 
They are to be understood as well as assented to, — 
realized, not simply recognized. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE CONTINUITY OF THE PROCESS. 

" I am come that they might have life, and that they might have 
it more abundantly." 

The Creator and the Saviour of the world are 
one. The Logos, of whom it is said " he was in 
the world, and the world was made by him, and the 
world knew him not," is at the same time the Re- 
deemer of mankind, of whom it is affirmed " as 
many as received him to them gave he power to be- 
come the sons of God." He is the same of whom 
another apostle says, " By him were all things 
created that are in heaven and that are in earth, 
visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or 
dominions, or principalities, or powers ; all things 
were created by him and for him ; and he is before 
all things, and by him all things consist." In strik- 
ing harmony with these passages are all those which 
describe the great work of the Saviour of men as 
a new creation, a regeneration, a rescue from death 
by the infusion of new life. 

So closely, indeed, have these two functions of 
origination and rescue been associated that our 
conception of the first cannot be modified in any 
important respect without also changing our idea of 
the second. If we think of the original creation as 



THE CONTINUITY OF THE PROCESS. 445 

a succession of suddenly completed and wholly dis- 
connected acts occurring within a particular epoch, 
we almost unavoidably construe salvation as an iso- 
lated effect produced once for all upon the soul of 
man by the power that created him, But if we re- 
gard creation as a process, — a cooperative process 
participated in by the creature, — we are likely to 
think of salvation as effected gradually and by a 
like cooperative activity. And not only this. We 
shall range the latter under the former as part of it. 
Creation being a not yet completed process, salva- 
tion coming in at any point means the rescue, not 
simply of the product, but of the process itself from 
miscarriage and failure. Let us make the hypo- 
thesis that this is the true conception, and then pro- 
ceed to test it by the principles of evolution, the 
Scriptural idea of salvation, and the facts of moral 
experience. Can it be substantiated without doing 
violence to any of these ? 

Our investigation need not concern itself much 
with matters remotely connected with the history of 
man ; yet it may be worth while to consider briefly 
this general question : Does creation by evolution, 
as it appears in the lower realms of nature, easily 
assimilate the idea of salvation ? Does the latter 
fall into a natural place under the former ? 

The phenomena of germ life afford a most satis- 
factory analogy for the answer. 

A seed is a perishable thing. " Dust thou art, to 
dust thou shalt return," is true of every part of it 
that we can see. But it contains a something which 
we cannot see, but which we infer from experience. 



446 WHAT IS REALITY? 

And the same experience teaches us further that it 
is uncertain whether the potential life which slum- 
bers in a seed will be quickened into actual life or 
not. This depends upon many conditions. Fore- 
most among them is the necessity of receiving an 
impulse from the great source of all vitality, the 
sun. If this and other conditions are fulfilled, the 
possibilities of the seed may be realized, otherwise 
it is doomed. As matter of fact, we know that of 
the many seeds formed only a few are rescued in 
the realization of their life principle. This anal- 
ogy, which extends to all forms of organized exist- 
ence, animal as well as vegetable, meets us again 
in the history of species and genera, and, as we 
should anticipate in a realm which evolution has 
made its own, we find a term which, though not a 
synonym for salvation, represents a cognate thought. 
Survival implies salvation ; and the former is often 
made to stand for the latter in the teachings of 
Christ. Salvation is life, its antithesis is death. 
The Saviour of the world is the Great Physician 
who has come to restore to permanent health that 
which is diseased and on the way to dissolution. 

It is needless to dwell upon this. Every one who 
has pondered the words and elaborate figures used 
by the founder of Christianity must have been im- 
pressed with the wonderful parallelism which they 
suggest to the processes of nature as interpreted by 
evolution. But in dealing with this most vital of 
all questions I shall hope to win the reader not by 
multiplying analogies, nor by pointing out resem- 
blances in those departments of nature that lie most 



THE CONTINUITY OF THE PBOCESS. 447 

remote from each other. But, assuming that we 
are least liable to variation from the truth when we 
compare things that are by nature most closely re- 
lated, I shall confine myself chiefly to a considera- 
tion of the moral history of man, and try to show 
that methods disclose themselves in its successive 
stages which afford a strong corroboration of the 
hypothesis that creation and salvation are but dif- 
ferent aspects of one process ; that men are saved 
not by being snatched out of the process of the 
world, not by being turned back to a condition 
previously occupied and lost, but saved into a higher 
state by the progressive development of spiritual 
life. 

The moral history of man naturally divides itself 
into two great epochs : that which antedated the 
incarnation of the Saviour of the world, and that 
which is subsequent to it. One great contrast of 
these two periods lies in the degree of knowledge 
which we possess concerning them. The former is 
largely prehistoric. The latter is historic. The 
former, presenting us with a variety of results of 
the most interesting character, reveals but little as 
to the sources from whence they have sprung. The 
latter lays before us the whole course of its history 
from the feeblest beginnings to the present time. 
Any interpretation of the former period, therefore, 
commends itself to us in so far as it harmonizes with 
the most approved construction of the latter. The 
better known must be the justification of theories 
with regard to the less known. 

As to the beginnings of the former period, the 



448 WHAT IS REALITY t 

Bible gives us some very important information em- 
bodied in a figurative account of the great ethical 
event of the race. From this theology has constructed 
its conception of man before and after the Fall. 
Now I think it cannot be questioned that a doctrine 
or conception that takes its departure from a figure 
must always be open to modification. 

In so far as it refers to the figure as authority, its 
right to existence is hypothetical ; and neither by the 
rules of logic nor of morals can those who hold it be 
justified in refusing to entertain additional light 
from any source. The principles of evolution offer 
a revised interpretation of the story of the Garden of 
Eden, based upon the careful study of an older reve- 
lation from the same author, — a revelation which is 
not figurative, but which men have only begun to 
learn to read in these latter days. I shall try to 
show that this interpretation, though differing in 
many respects from the traditional one, does no vio- 
lence to the Scripture narrative of the Fall, but, on 
the contrary, brings out all the proportions of that 
narrative with greater strength and fullness of mean- 
ing, while it throws a flood of light forward, illumi- 
nating the whole realm of salvation. 

The certain information conveyed in the narrative 
of the Garden of Eden may, it seems to me, be fairly 
summarized as follows : There was a time when man 
was morally innocent. But he did not remain in this 
condition. He lost his innocence, and became a 
guilty sinner. This came about through the dawn- 
ing of a moral sense in man, a temptation, an act of 
disobedience, and a great moral illumination. Now 



THE CONTINUITY OF THE PROCESS. 449 

in the expansion of the narrative of the Fall, theol- 
ogy has emphasized two of these factors, but has 
failed to let the others have much influence upon its 
deductions. If it had given the same prominence to 
the fact of moral illumination that it allowed to 
temptation and disobedience, we should not have had 
the not-yet-moral man presented to us as a developed 
positively moral being, having a full knowledge of 
the law, and yielding a perfect obedience to it. 

Evolution calls attention to this neglected factor. 
It even makes it the prominent one. It represents 
it as the new, hitherto unevolved principle which, 
entering in, changed the character of other princi- 
ples that had long been active in the world. Before 
this moral enlightenment temptation was only desire ; 
disobedience was simple inadvertence. In its absence 
man could not have become a sinner by any number 
of acts transgressing the moral law as we know it. 
Animals constantly perform actions which would 
render them sinners if they occupied the moral posi- 
tion to which man has been advanced. From being 
innocent they would, if thus advanced, without any 
change in their actions, become thieves and murder- 
ers; they would be cruel, intemperate, incestuous, 
base, sordid. But, on the other hand, it was equally 
impossible for man to be a holy or righteous being 
without the incoming of this new element of moral 
consciousness which the Scripture narrative of the 
Fall describes. 

In giving prominence to this fundamental condi- 
tion of sin and righteousness, therefore, evolution 
brings distinctly before us the important fact that 



450 WHAT IS BEALITY? 

what we have been in the habit of emphasizing as 
the Fall was a result of the rise of man ; and that 
the rise is by far the more important aspect of this 
great crisis. It was the entrance of that true light 
that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. 
It was the birth of conscience. It was man's first 
intimation of contact with God. It rendered possi- 
ble the new creature in Christ, the partaking of the 
tree of eternal life, when the fullness of time should 
come. 

The lighting up of this side of the story makes it, 
I grant, a different thing ; but it does not render it 
less difficult to harmonize with our belief in a loving 
and all-wise Being, the same yesterday and to-day 
and forever, who has foreseen the end from the 
beginning, and whose plans realize themselves with- 
out failure. It relieves us of the conception of a 
God whose purposes were thwarted by the willfulness 
of his creatures. It makes the Fall, sin, an incident 
in the elevation of the creature to a higher grade of 
existence. 

It may, indeed, be objected that the knowledge of 
good and the rise of man in the scale of being are 
not the aspects of the Fall which the narrative itself 
or the history of this period emphasizes. But " xpai- 

tov rrj <f>vcra ecr^aroi/ rrj yevtcra" We are at the begin- 
ning of a great process, which is to be traced from 
its inception to the advent of its final stage. And, 
naturally enough, the narrative, while embodying all 
the vital elements of the situation, gives prominence 
to those which first in the order of development be- 
came active. The immediate result of moral enlight- 



THE CONTINUITY OF THE PBOCESS. 451 

enment was the realization of moral evil. And the 
knowledge of good, though it came at the same time, 
is in the story related to evil as a background of 
light is related to a foreground in which darker fig- 
ures represent action. 

From our position of Christian enlightenment we 
know as a certainty that which was only vaguely 
hinted at in the earlier record, namely, that the 
human race will triumph over evil and realize the 
possibilities opened before it in the knowledge of 
good. And just as a man in reviewing the events 
of a successful life will often fasten upon moments 
which at the time seemed pregnant with evil as the 
crises which forced him into the working out of a 
higher destiny, so the true significance of the Fall is 
flashed upon us by the light of our later experience ; 
and we find the fullest justification for the position 
that in its highest and most enduring aspects it was 
the rise of man. 

But we must not enter upon the consideration of 
the later era till we have come to a clear understand- 
ing of the condition into which man was brought 
by the Fall. What, in other words, does evolution 
make of sin ? In the first place, I think there is no 
risk in saying that evolution would characterize sin 
as progressive. It came into the world as the result 
of a moral enlightenment that has extended only 
very gradually over the wide area of conduct which 
it now covers. The study of historic man leads us to 
believe that sin, as an abstract idea, had no existence 
in his mind till long after he had recognized it in 
many concrete forms ; and that, in the first instance, 



452 WHAT IS REALITY? 

it was confined to some definite central spot of be- 
havior. With regard to some one alternative, he 
became conscious that the choice of a particular 
course of action was superior to the choice of its 
opposite, and that the recognition of superiority car- 
ried with it a sense of obligation. 

This position is fully indorsed in the Scriptural 
account. Man might eat of every tree of the garden 
save one. It was only in relation to one particular 
act that he felt the " thou shalt not " of conscience. 
This feeling was not as yet the knowledge of good 
and evil. It was its dim foreshadowing. It con- 
tained the intimations of a world not yet realized. 
Knowledge came with action. Disobedience to con- 
science brought remorse, and remorse illuminated 
the fallen as well as the higher possible self that 
might have been. Once awakened, this moral sense 
extended itself with the ever-widening relations of 
life, and with the increase of the self-refiective 
power in man. 

But does evolution offer any explanation of the 
fact that man chose, in so many cases, the down- 
ward instead of the upward course ? I think it has 
a very natural one. It is a fact of nature as well as 
a truth of revelation, that God has chosen the weak 
things of the world to confound the mighty, — things 
that are not to bring to nought things that are. 
And if we will bear in mind that the period during 
which moral evil has sway in the world is the period 
of the minority of the principle that, in its fully de- 
veloped strength, is to triumph over evil, we shall 
not be at a loss to account for sin. Unmoral man 



THE CONTINUITY OF THE PROCESS. 453 

was, according to evolution, a creature of very posi- 
tive qualities, a self - poised, energetic being of 
strongly developed tendencies. He had roughed it 
in the world, he had won his title to existence by a 
hand-to-hand conflict with his environment, and had 
thus matured habits and instincts that bore him 
along in certain well-defined lines of action with a 
force not easily turned or thwarted. 

Into this vigorous life comes the new principle, the 
dawning of the spiritual nature. It comes not with 
the power of the rushing, mighty wind, but as a " still, 
small voice." It comes as an interruption, as a com- 
mand to refrain from doing something that the 
whole strong current of the man's past life urges him 
to do. It comes as an authority external to the soul, 
even though it arises within it. This peculiarity of 
conscience, though it is never fully explained till 
man has advanced to the knowledge that God works 
within him, is characteristic of its least developed 
stages. It may appeal to man as duty to parents or 
offspring, as the command of a divinely commissioned 
government, or as the insistence of an alter ego, — 
a better possible self, that ought to be realized. But 
in every form it stands apart from the present self as 
having separate and divergent interests. It makes 
light of the authority of the self in subjection to 
which primitive man has lived, fought his battles, 
and conquered his enemies ; it pronounces this self 
to be evil, in so far as it remains the end instead of 
becoming the means to higher things. It insists upon 
subordinating it. There is, therefore, a natural 
rebellion of the ego that is in possession. All that 



454 WHAT IS REALITY f 

self-assertion, that amour propre, that is the out- 
growth of the instinct of self-preservation on the 
plane now occupied, rises up to contest the higher 
promptings of conscience. 

But, besides this, there is in our members a deep- 
seated physical basis for sin, a vis inertice, which 
works against the stimulus of the Spirit. By this 
I do not mean a state of passivity, but rather the 
tendency to continue in the direction of an impulse 
imparted, of a momentum already acquired. In the 
moral sphere this becomes obstinacy, but when re- 
garded merely as the characteristic of a physical 
organism, it is a tendency to the flow of energy in 
the lines of more or less permanently established and 
specialized function. 

By far the greater part of the vital expenditure of 
each day, even in a somewhat varied life, follows the 
thoroughfares of habit, of unconscious and almost 
mechanical routine. It is, as a rule, only a most in- 
considerable part that goes to the modification or im- 
provement of this routine. A man may be exceed- 
ingly active within the lines of established function 
without much real effort. Given health, and a not 
too difficult environment, and life courses along the 
well-worn channels not only of the vegetative pro- 
cesses of the body, but also of conscious labor, with 
a sense of exhilaration. A slight element of change 
adds zest to this routine, but whenever the volume 
of vitality is to any considerable extent diverted 
from this to the formation of new and more elaborate 
functions there is pain. There is first the pain of 
unsatisfied craving. Each depleted nerve centre 



THE CONTINUITY OF THE PROCESS. 455 

cries out, in its own way, against the cutting short of 
its accustomed supply of vital stimulus. It besieges 
the will to break down, if possible, the new order of 
things, and this internal warfare destroys the care- 
less flow of life. Nor is this all. 

To the pain of repression is added the labor of 
constructive effort, the effort to realize a positive 
morality. A late writer on ethics has well said: 
" Morality is internal. The moral law has to be ex- 
pressed in the form, be this, not in the form, do 
this." 1 It involves not a change of outward be- 
havior merely, the conducting of life into new chan- 
nels, but more than this, the making of the channels 
themselves. But does morality call upon man to 
make these channels ? It certainly does. And, 
under God, he has the power to make them. He can 
make them, it is true, only by indirection. But he 
has the assurance, both of nature and of revelation, 
that if, in the determinations of his will, accompanied 
by appropriate activities, he obeys the higher law, at 
first with difficulty and pain, the Spirit, working, as 
it were, in the wake of those efforts, will conduct 
them to the highest constructive results. I am not 
supposing that primitive man understands all this 
any more than a little child understands it. In each 
case a command is recognized, and a strong resistance 
is experienced. 

But now we must carefully discriminate between 
this natural reluctance, this opposition of the old 
nature, and sin. Sin cannot be a physical product, 
should we adopt the evolution of Professor Huxley 

1 Science of Ethics, Leslie Stephen. 



456 WHAT IS BEALITY? 

and of Mr. Spencer, which sees in man's conviction 
of responsibility an illusion, then, indeed, sin itself 
would be an illusion. But to the evolution that rec- 
ognizes moral free agency as a real factor, sin also is 
a reality. It enters the world for the first time when 
a conscious free agent chooses to realize self on a 
lower plane than that indicated by conscience. It 
enters, not in its fully developed positive form, but 
as a refusal rather than a determination, a rejection 
of the higher rather than a deliberate choice of the 
lower. But its more positive form is anon brought 
out by the insistence of conscience, which has come 
to stay and fight out the battle to the end. This 
insistence produces annoyance, opposition, and, in 
some, a willful determination to persist in the chosen 
way of disobedience. Its language is : "I do not 
want to rise to higher things ; I will not rise ; I will 
live my life as it pleases me to live it, without regard 
to the commands or threatenings of this intruder." 

But the great majority of men assume no such 
position. Some assent, and mean to follow, and, 
in a halting way, do follow, the voice of the guide 
that ever strives to draw them higher. Their lives 
are not all obedience, nor all disobedience, but their 
abiding choice is to obey. There are others, not a 
small number, who settle down into a middle course 
that gives a measure of peace. Man has the power 
not only to resist conscience, but the far more dan- 
gerous power of evading it. He who is engaged in 
a recognized, embittered warfare with the Spirit of 
God in his soul is in a less perilous way than he who 
has succeeded in paralyzing that side of his nature 



THE CONTINUITY OF THE PROCESS. 457 

which is sensitive to the motions of the Spirit. In- 
genious as men have always been in discovering nar- 
cotics for the body, their skill in this direction is prob- 
ably more than matched by the variety and potency 
of their inventions for deadening the nerves of the 
soul. Some of these are natural, like simple neglect ; 
some are highly artificial, like formal and soulless 
religions. Some are gross, like sensual pleasures ; 
others are of the utmost refinement, — garments of 
self -righteousness, of delicate texture. But the result 
is the same in all cases. Sin, except on occasions, 
instead of being a painful, disturbing element, is like 
a dull, inert parasite that vegetates in the soul, ap- 
propriating its nourishment, battening on its life, but 
making little stir. 

We may now turn to the idea of salvation, the 
power that makes for the rescue and realization of 
the higher life, which sin tends to destroy. Must 
we, to find this element at work, leave the first period 
behind us? Was there no salvation before Christ 
died ? Let us see what we mean by the word. If 
we understand by it a complete triumph over evil, in 
the full realization of man's higher possibilities, we 
must say that neither in the one period nor in the 
other is there salvation on earth. But if we appre- 
hend it as a process that moves toward its fulfill- 
ment, in accordance with the laws that govern the 
growth of other things, we may discern its efficiency 
from the beginning to the end. 

Taking the largest view of it, we may see that 
elements making for salvation were present at every 
step of the way. The knowledge of good and evil, 



458 WHAT IS REALITY? 

though it came through transgression, was the be- 
ginning of salvation. It was the first step toward 
the rescue of the spiritual possibilities of the soul. 
Whether these possibilities might have been devel- 
oped otherwise it is idle to inquire. That they were 
developed in the race through sin is matter of sacred 
history, and the experience of the individual in- 
dorses the truth of the record. If this involves us in 
the assumption that good may somehow grow from 
a root of evil, or be inextricably associated with 
evil, we are not thereby brought into conflict with 
the actual world of our experience, nor with the 
scheme of Christianity as set forth in the Scriptures. 
We are only caught in the metaphysical difficulty 
of being unable to make the joints of our fragmen- 
tary abstractions fit into each other. We are con- 
fused in one of those illusory cross-roads of thought 
which, according to our calculations, ought to con- 
nect the main lines of our reasoning, but which ex- 
perimental reason has proved to be labyrinthine. 

But even if we take a more restricted view, and 
search for the fruits of the process, we shall not 
seek in vain. From " righteous Abel " on through 
all the dark periods of the world's history, the crea- 
tive work of salvation has unmistakably declared 
itself. We ought not, indeed, to expect to find the 
fully developed Christian type of man in pre-Chris- 
tian centuries, but we do find the disposition that, 
under favorable circumstances, develops into Chris- 
tianity. The fruits of the Spirit are not identical 
in all ages. The higher law of Christ has brought 
into view, and highly honored, virtues that were 



THE CONTINUITY OF THE PROCESS. 459 

hardly recognized under the old dispensation. Long- 
suffering and meekness were, so to speak, nebula in 
the field of man's moral vision, until the powerful 
lens of the great Teacher was turned upon them. 
But love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, faithful- 
ness, temperance, fortitude, were recognized and cul- 
tivated by some, in obedience to the leadings of the 
Spirit. 

That all these elements of salvation were at work 
in some of the descendants of Abraham, no one 
who has read the Old Testament can for a moment 
doubt. And wherever the religious history of other 
nations is read with a sympathetic human interest, 
it can hardly fail to produce the conviction that 
God is no respecter of persons, but that in every 
nation He has had those who have not bowed the 
knee to Baal, but, according to their enlightenment, 
have feared Him, and in some measure worked 
righteousness. 1 " I like life," says Mencius, " and 
I also like righteousness ; but if the two are not to 
be retained together, I let go life and hold to right- 
eousness." The ethical systems wrought out by 
generations of earnest men, under the different civ- 
ilizations, are of themselves evidence that during all 
those centuries of relative darkness the Spirit of 
God was working with men, disturbing, rebuking, 
alarming them, because of their sins, encouraging 
and sustaining them in their righteous efforts, and 
ever pointing them to a higher ideal for their attain- 
ment. 

1 In such passages as John x. 16, and Matt, xxv, 37-41, Christ 
seems to refer distinctly to this class. 



460 WHAT IS REALITY? 

But, in this view, what becomes of the lofty 
claims of Christianity ? Did it bring nothing new 
into the world ? 

We are confronted here with a question of the 
very same order as that which meets us at the emer- 
gence of man from a creature that is not man. It 
is frequently put in this form : Have we here a 
difference of kind or only a difference of degree f 
A more unsatisfactory question could bardly be 
framed, for the reason that there is no test by which 
to settle what constitutes a difference of kind. When 
simple elements unite to form a chemical compound, 
there results, we say, a difference of kind ; but as 
this has been brought about by differences of condi- 
tion and proportion, it may be objected that the 
compound is not really, but only apparently, a new 
substance. The true question for us to ask about 
Christianity is this : Does its newness consist in the 
presence of an absolutely new, simple element in 
the world, or is it a new condition of things, a de- 
velopment of higher functions brought about by 
differences of relation and proportion ? To answer 
this, we must compare both the facts and the order 
of the facts under Christianity with those of the 
antecedent period. 

Let us begin at the beginning. Man entered the 
realm of morals through the gate of the knowledge 
of good and evil. By this knowledge he was made 
to partake of the divine nature, not simply poten- 
tially, but actually. Now, turning to the later stage 
of moral creation, what do we find to be its first 
step or prime condition ? The very same, — moral 



THE CONTINUITY OF THE PROCESS. 461 

enlightenment. Man is not wrenched out of the 
process which was begun when the eyes of the race 
were opened ; but he is carried on to a higher stage 
of the same process. He is brought once more to 
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. When 
the aged Simeon, filled with the Holy Ghost, took 
the infant Jesus in his arms, he was inspired to 
prophesy, not simply " a light to lighten the Gen- 
tiles and the glory of thy people Israel," but, fur- 
ther, "Behold, this child is set for the fall and ris- 
ing again of many in Israel." Now it is not the 
word " fall " that I wish to emphasize in calling at- 
tention to this prophecy. The word stands for a 
fact; and this fact has been realized, not only in 
the experience of Israel, but in the consciousness 
of Christendom, with a fullness which justifies us 
in designating the entrance of Christianity into the 
world as a, fall. 

Like the first great ethical event of the race, it 
was preeminently and distinctively a great moral 
illumination. Like that also, it was a moral con- 
demnation of the profoundest significance. It was 
an intensified repetition of the primal revelation of 
man to himself as a moral being. It was brought 
about by the same agencies. The revealer is the 
same in both. Conscience, the light that lightens 
every man that cometh into the world, is also the 
eternal Logos that, in the form of man, preached 
the Sermon on the Mount. Like that earlier revela- 
tion, it came not all at once, nor independently of 
man's cooperation. It came first as a degree of 
light communicated from without ; but this was de- 



462 WHAT IS REALITY f 

veloped into a deep and abiding race-consciousness 
only when it had been acted upon. It began with 
the preaching of John. His baptism unto repent- 
ance was the symbolical representation and pro, 
phecy of that subsequent destructive baptism of the 
Holy Ghost which is likened to fire, a baptism of 
moral light, that by convincing men of righteous- 
ness and sin cast them into the depths of moral 
despair. 

The first great wave of this illumination comes 
through Christ's teachings. In the Sermon on the 
Mount he took the law of Moses and spiritualized 
its letter to such a degree as to make righteous- 
ness appear impossible. By carrying the discrim- 
ination of good and evil into the motives and dis- 
positions of the heart, he disclosed to all those who 
could understand the language of the Spirit their 
absolute and hopeless unrighteousness. The Apostle 
Paul vividly describes the depth of the fall which 
this illumination of the law was fitted to bring 
about in a man who had the moral discernment and 
honesty to receive it. "I had not known sin, but 
by the law." " I was alive without the law once ; 
but when the commandment came sin revived and I 
died. And the commandment which was ordained 
to life I found to be unto death." But to only a 
few select souls could this lighting up of the law of 
Moses carry conviction and rouse such a knowledge 
of righteousness and sin as should prepare and 
make straight the way of the Lord in Christian 
salvation. 

No prohibition could be made to carry the mean- 



THE CONTINUITY OF THE PROCESS. 463 

ing of that positive injunction, " Love one another 
as I have loved you" This brief commandment 
makes the whole life of Christ a standing condem- 
nation of every man who accepts Him as the truth. 
To love men as Christ loved them sets before every 
one of his followers a hopeless standard. Here is 
light indeed, not of a saving but of a destructive 
character. To every conscientious soul it lays bare 
its selfishness in a way that kills. But even this 
is not the extent of the Christian fall. The teach- 
ing and the life may stir a response and produce 
conviction in men who have been in the habit of 
responding to the influences of the Spirit and of 
rendering an imperfect obedience to it. But the 
inefficacy of such knowledge in the case of the vast 
majority of mankind was clearly discerned and 
pointed out by our Saviour. " This people's heart 
is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, 
and their eyes they have closed." There was a far 
more powerful instrument of conviction in reserve. 

As in the first fall, so in the second, the deep 
abiding impression of the nature of sin was to be 
developed and stamped upon the consciousness of 
the race by its own act. The crime of the first 
disobedience was to be reenacted in the tragedy of 
the Crucifixion. " This is the condemnation that 
light is come into the world, and men loved dark- 
ness rather than light, because their deeds were 
evil." The holiness of God, that at first had feebly 
declared itself in conscience, is now declared fully 
and clearly in the form of a perfect humanity, and 
the result is an outbreak of bitter hostility. The 



464 WHAT IS REALITY* 

most potent forces of the physical world may slum- 
ber for ages in absolute inactivity and give no sign 
of their presence till brought into contact with some 
element that sets them free. It is the same with 
moral forces. " The world cannot hate you, but me 
it hateth because I testify of it that the works 
thereof are evil." Perfect righteousness coming 
into a world of sin demonstrated the nature of sin ; 
and by so doing it provided, at the same time, the 
most powerful organ of conviction and the most 
expressive medium of confession. 

Let us now see if we can trace the relations which 
this Christian fall sustained to the previous and sub- 
sequent development of the race. Can we discover 
in this morally destructive work a necessary stage of 
the great world process ? I think we may safely say 
that the continuation of that process in the line of 
moral and spiritual elevation, independently of such 
an experience, is inconceivable. Every advance in 
the perception of righteousness involves the percep- 
tion of deficiency. The whole world, organic and in- 
organic, moves by attractions and repulsions. In 
sensible organisms, all self -initiated progress is de- 
pendent upon an impelling power that may, in a 
general way, be called dissatisfaction. 

This is often the incentive and the spring of effort 
even in the absence of a well-defined object of desire. 
It is this that spurs flagging energies by making 
the pain of endurance seem greater than the pain of 
conflict. Response to environment, adjustment of 
disturbed relations, is the expression of this princi- 
ple in the lower sphere. In a higher we call it a 



THE CONTINUITY OF THE PROCESS. 465 

quickening of the instinct of self-preservation. The 
new enlightenment that pours in upon man with the 
Christian fall radically alters the relations which he 
sustains to an ideal self, to society, to God. It has 
thrown his whole existence, so to speak, out of joint. 
He must make a supreme effort to rise to something 
higher, or morally perish ; for besides the pain of the 
present there is a sense of peril, the shadow of an 
impending calamity and the loss of everything. 

The recognition of this principle throws a flood of 
light upon our inquiry. But it does not fully answer 
it. A sense of present or impending evil cannot act 
as a stimulus except it be so proportioned to the 
mind as not to destroy hope. Otherwise it is simply 
paralyzing and despair-producing; and this, as we 
have seen, is the effect of the Christian fall. How 
shall we account for this excess, as it would seem, of 
moral illumination ? 

To answer this we must advance to a consideration 
of the distinctive positive elements of Christianity. 
The Christian fall is, in the first place, adjusted 
to the proclamation of a full and free forgiveness 
of sins, — a forgiveness of sins in the case of men 
who have still a career of moral effort before them. 
Therefore, the integrity of the principle hitherto fol- 
lowed in the education of the race, that of making 
men make themselves, requires that a full assurance 
of the forgiveness of sins be counterbalanced by an 
equally full recognition of the perfect and unchange- 
able holiness of God. The object to be attained by 
salvation is moral character. This can be produced 
only in and through voluntary choice. But the true 



466 WHAT IS REALITY ? 

choice that constitutes and produces the ideal char- 
acter is conditioned upon the perception of a true 
ideal as the object of choice. But the ideals of men 
are not fixed ; they are forever on the move, for bet- 
ter or for worse. Inborn disposition, indulged incli- 
nation, habitual attention, help to make them what 
they are ; and more or less consciously men exercise 
a selective control over the elements of their moral 
representations so as to make their ideals, conform 
to lower schemes of excellence, not too remote or 
too difficult. There can be no assured progress, 
therefore, unless there be some standard which shall 
draw the ever-forming ideal upward. 

But full and free forgiveness of sins, while it 
relieves men of the burdens of the past, is, as regards 
the future, relaxing and ideal-obscuring. To prevent 
its acting in this mischievous way, therefore, it is 
necessary that it should be inseparably joined with 
an impression of the true, the remote, the infinitely 
difficult ideal of God. This has been accomplished 
by the life and death of Christ. So that he who 
receives Christ in his teachings, in his life of self- 
denying ministry, in the fullness of his divine antith- 
esis to the human life that surrounded Him, and who 
recognizes in the hostility that slew Him the mani- 
festation of our common sinful nature, realizes and 
expresses all that which men incoherently and with a 
half-consciousness expressed under the earlier dis- 
pensation by sin-offerings and purifications. 

One who thus receives Christ lives in the light. 
He cannot confuse God's ideal with his own. He 
cannot bring the righteousness of God down to his 



THE CONTINUITY OF THE PBOCESS. 467 

own level. He can receive forgiveness at the hands 
of Christ only as the inseparable adjunct of the com- 
mand, " Be ye perfect, even as your Father which 
is in heaven is perfect." No deliverance from the 
penalties of sin can satisfy him. He must rise to 
that higher form of salvation which rescues from sin 
itself. This, as it seems to me, satisfactorily explains 
why an apparently excessive and despair-producing 
degree of moral enlightenment was necessary. 

But the problem is not yet solved. The mere fact 
of the necessity of this apparent excess of moral light 
does nothing to relieve our difficulty with regard to 
its destructive nature. The forgiveness of sins that 
are past does not furnish the power to overcome in 
the future. The light that makes forgiveness possi- 
ble leaves the forgiven soul more discouraged than 
ever in view of the higher morality revealed to it. 
We are brought face to face with the question of the 
Apostle Paul, " Did then that which was good be- 
come death unto me ? " His answer is, " I thank 
God through Jesus Christ our Lord. . . . For the 
law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made 
me free from the law of sin and death." In other 
words, the excess of moral light is adjusted not sim- 
ply to the forgiveness of sins, but to something that 
gives life and hope in even greater volume than it 
gives despair, that is, to the knowledge of the con- 
structive work of Christianity, — " the law of the 
Spirit of Life." 

By this man is assured that he is not expected to 
conquer in his own strength, but that the Spirit shall 
work within him ; and that faithful striving will, 



468 WHAT IS REALITY t 

through God, result in a triumphant ending, no mat- 
ter how great the discouragements of the long con- 
flict. Nor is this all. In Christianity there is devel- 
oped a higher element than self-realization. The end 
of religion is the realization of one's own life in that 
of another, — the conscious surrender and uniting of 
the soul which has lived in conscious separation. 
The power that works with us is not an unconscious 
energy ; it is a personality that links itself with ours, 
— that pours its life-blood into our veins as by a 
spiritual transfusion; a personality whose distin- 
guishing characteristic is love, — a love that is at 
the same time the source and the end of our being. 
From Him in whom all fullness dwells our lives have 
flowed, and in Him all our desires, aspirations, and 
highest emotions shall find an ever widening and 
deepening satisfaction. This is the outcome of the 
travail of the human soul. Toward this consumma- 
tion the whole history of man and every adjustment 
in it has pointed. For this the tree of the knowledge 
of good and evil was planted in the garden. For 
this man was made to pass through the deep spiritual 
prostration of the Christian fall. 

Let us scrutinize this latter part of the history 
that we may satisfy ourselves as to the correctness of 
the hypothesis that salvation is the rescue not simply 
of man, but also of an antecedent process, from mis- 
carriage and failure. Are we safe in affirming that 
every element in it is the continuation or repetition 
on a higher scale of a factor that was previously 
energizing in the world? May we describe Chris- 
tianity as a vast extension and deepening of all the 



THE CONTINUITY OF THE PBOCESS. 469 

higher ranges of human consciousness, by means of 
which the inpouring of divine influence, in greatly 
increased volume, was made possible? First, as to 
the forgiveness of sins. It is unnecessary to dwell 
upon this, because Scripture itself so clearly points 
out the fact that when man approaches God through 
Christ he experiences and expresses that which his 
fathers feebly felt and imperfectly expressed through 
sacrifices. By this higher medium of expression is 
secured not simply a concentration of thought on 
the essential meaning of sacrifice, but there is at the 
same time the clearing away of the relatively low 
conceptions that obscured even while they revealed 
God to the more ancient worshiper. 

But what shall we say of the constructive work of 
the Spirit ? When Christ says, " Except a man be 
born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God," is 
He speaking of the continuation of a process ? When 
He promises that He will send the Spirit, is He 
thinking of an influence that is already at work? 
Or when Paul affirms that " if any man be in Christ 
he is a new creature : old things are passed away ; 
behold, all things are become new," does he at the 
same time conceive of the Christian life as the moral 
life raised to a higher level of thought and feeling ? 

I believe the whole current of thought in the 
Bible, and the whole record of the world as we know 
it, compels us to answer these questions in the 
affirmative. The letter killeth, the spirit maketh 
alive. Each one of these expressions is most ration- 
ally interpreted when we consider it as having a 
relative rather than an absolute meaning. The 



• 



470 WHAT IS REALITY* 

importance of the new stage of enlightenment and 
development on which man has entered cannot be 
overestimated or overstated. To impress that im- 
portance upon us the very strongest figures which 
language affords are used. But let us remember 
that our Saviour was careful to represent his work 
as a continuity. " I am come not to destroy, but to 
fulfill." " My Father worketh hitherto, and I work ; 
if I do not the works of my Father, believe me not." 
The Spirit that was promised, and that gave external 
evidence of its presence on the day of Pentecost, is 
everywhere identified with the Spirit of the Old 
Testament. And Paul, who uses such strong antith- 
esis to express the transcendent significance of what 
Christ has achieved, does not fail to recognize a vital 
continuity between a life of moral endeavor without 
Christ and the higher life of realization in Christ. 

Before the light of Christianity dawned, while all 
the nations were living under the law, men were 
divided into two classes : First, those who delighted 
in the law of God after the inward man and made 
partially successful efforts to obey it ; and, second, 
those who did not like to retain God in their know- 
ledge, and were given over to a reprobate mind. 
Judged by the law, both these classes are concluded 
under sin and, by the revelation of the Christian 
standard, both, in so far as they receive it, are 
morally slain. They become morally dead in tres- 
passes and sins, and helpless as regards the future. 
But for those who belong to the former class the new 
birth is not the transformation of the will, for to will 
is already present, but how to perform that which is 



THE CONTINUITY OF THE PBOCESS. 471 

good they find not. It is for them the implantation 
of a new principle of action through the avenue of 
the mind. They are begotten of God by the word 
of truth. This truth is received by the reason, which 
reacts upon it till the whole aspect of the world is 
changed. 

The face of God is changed. He who has mani- 
fested himself as distant in his holiness, as exacting 
in his requirements, shows himself in Christ as the 
sustainer and the Saviour of every one who wills to 
do his will. Not that He has changed his character, 
or his purpose concerning us, or his method of work- 
ing. He has only taken away the dimness from our 
eyes. It is still his plan that we should work out 
our own salvation. He casts us down in our own 
esteem, but He does not treat with contempt the 
children whom He has made in his own image. He 
does not say : " Stand aside ; your efforts are useless, 
and worse than useless ; the ages past have demon- 
strated this. You are an utter and total failure, 
therefore everything is changed. You may yet be 
saved, but only by resigning yourself to the Spirit, 
who will do everything for you." 

On the contrary, the same God who, through his 
prophets, spoke so tenderly to his ancient people as 
a nation, speaks now with the same consideration to 
every individual whose soul is morally cast down 
within him. " A bruised reed shall he not break, and 
smoking flax shall he not quench." " Fear thou not," 
He said to Israel, " for I am with thee ; be not dis- 
mayed, for I am thy God. I will strengthen thee, 
yea, I will help thee, yea, I will uphold thee with the 



472 WHAT IS REALITY f 

right hand of my righteousness." And to us He 
says, " Without me ye can do nothing," but " my 
grace is sufficient for thee." And the true-hearted, 
courageous response of the soul is given in the words 
of the Apostle Paul : " I can do all things through 
Christ which strengtheneth me." 

The revelation is no longer a savor of death unto 
death, but a savor of life unto life. The Christian 
fall has been changed into a rising agajn. The 
cross, the emblem of our deepest shame and condem- 
nation, is transformed into the sign of victory. It 
is the way to the resurrection. " I am come that they 
might have life, and that they might have it more 
abundantly." It is no part of the Christian revela- 
tion to permanently destroy belief in the usefulness 
of human efforts or in the efficiency of our God-given 
faculties, but to restore confidence in these, and in- 
fuse into struggling souls the sustaining conscious- 
ness that their labors are not in vain in the Lord. 
There is to be a conquest and a triumph, ■*— not 
simply the triumph of God, but our triumph in and 
through God. " As many as received him, to them 
gave he power to become the sons of God." 

Is there, then, no difference between the old dis- 
pensation and the new? If the Spirit has always 
worked with man, if human efforts for good have 
always been supplemented by divine aid, what great 
thing has Christianity done for man ? It has done 
this : it has made the individual soul a conscious 
worker with God. It is true that even while men 
were striving to reach the lower standard it was their 
privilege to believe that God would assist them. 



THE CONTINUITY OF THE PROCESS. 473 

" They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their 
strength ; they shall mount up with wings as eagles ; 
they shall run, and not be weary ; they shall walk, 
and not faint." But in view of the higher standard 
revealed in Christ, the absolute insufficiency of the 
individual in separation is brought out with a full- 
ness unknown to the Old Testament. This is the 
essential distinction, the very life-principle of Chris- 
tianity. It is not simply the means to an end. It 
is the means and the end also. By this necessity the 
Word of God, the quickening principle, penetrates 
through the intellect to the heart and generates that 
principle of personal love which is not only a power 
productive of new life, but which is the new life it- 
self. In so far as this is developed there is a change 
not simply of the intellectual view, but of the deep- 
est springs of desire. The soul lives no more unto 
itself, even its ideal self, but unto Him who gave his 
own life for it. 

This consummation is indeed a something unique 
in the world. But it is not in its essence new. It 
is the sublimation, the apotheosis of the truest affec- 
tions evolved in human relationships ; and it is 
through these as the medium of expression that the 
union of the divine and human is made intelligible 
to us. God's love to us is that of a father, our love 
to Him is that of a son. The union of Christ and 
the believer is that of the most perfect friendship. 
The evidence of our having passed from death unto 
life is our love of the brethren. 

I have said, in passing, that this rendering of sal- 
vation is indorsed not only by Scripture but by the 



474 WHAT IS BEALITY? 

experience of every Christian. The first clear rev- 
elation of the knowledge of good and evil comes to 
every individual soul through transgression. The 
light and moral humiliation of Christianity do their 
work at a later stage. Nor does this exhaust the 
analogy. The whole process is repeated again and 
again. We never outgrow the tree of the knowledge 
of good and evil. The frequent appropriation of its 
stimulating fruit is the condition of spiritual growth. 
The Christian fall is experienced, not indeed every 
time we are guilty of transgression, but every time 
our eyes are opened to hitherto disregarded imper- 
fections and to the existence of a higher moral 
standard ; and our Christian life is made fuller and 
deeper every time we are impelled by our sense of 
insufficiency to draw more largely on the strength of 
the Saviour of our spirits. This is the divine method 
from beginning to end. 



APPENDIX A. 

THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIENCE. 

Morals are natural. The moral sense is natural. It 
has originated from the same source as our other instincts, 
and it owes its authority to the same power. How can 
we say otherwise? With regard to all the normal im- 
pulses of our nature which originate with a power not 
ourselves, and which are the outcome of an intelligence 
not our own, one of two things must be true. Either 
these impulses are from God, or they are not from Him. 
If they are from Him, then what we call the moral sense, 
or the moral instinct, is not degraded by being associated 
with them. On the contrary, to associate conscience with 
these other promptings of our nature is to place its au- 
thority upon the strongest and most unassailable basis. 

Why, then, it may be worth while to ask, is it that 
theistic writers have so often considered it necessary to 
take the ground that morals are outside nature ? I would 
suggest, first, that it is because of a time-honored and 
radical misconception as to the methods of nature's work- 
ing : a conception which ignores the fact that conflict is 
the condition of existence ; that antagonism is life, that 
the cessation of antagonism is death. Nature is thought 
of as working from without upon, and through, passive 
agents. It is a flowing stream that bears us on its cur- 
rent. Whatever, therefore, involves struggle, or is ac- 
quired as the result of struggle, is unnatural ; and moral- 
ity, which never is the result of floating with the current, 



476 APPENDIX A. 

but is in all cases the fruit of overcoming, seems, above 
all things, to be the contradiction of nature. 

But when it comes to be recognized that the normal 
state of all living things is a state of antagonism, that 
there is for everything a better possible condition that can 
be realized only through effort, the inadequacy of this 
idea of nature is manifest, and a broader conception be- 
gins to supplant it. Nature is no longer a stream. It is 
a great ocean that supports us, and of which we also are 
a part ; an ocean with many currents forcing 1 their way 
against and through it, while at the same time they are 
of it. Conduct, in the light of this conception, is natural, 
in harmony with the highest purposes of nature, even 
when conflict is at its sharpest. Not to accept the strug- 
gle is to be unnatural. To be natural is so to act as to 
continue in the line of true development. 

There is, however, another fancied reason for regard- 
ing morality as the antithesis of nature. It seems to have 
been suggested by the fear that morals are in danger of 
being identified with physical forces unless an absolute 
independence of origin be claimed for them ; and the ar- 
gument in support of it is based upon the assumption that 
morality, as exhibited in man, is not only higher than 
anything else in nature, but is the absolute contradiction 
of the processes of nature. 

Dr. Martineau's statement of this argument is a strik- 
ing one. After developing, in a passage of great beauty, 
the thought that the very soul of moral character is self- 
forgetful love, he asks, " Is, then, this religion of self- 
sacrifice the counterpart of the behavior of the objective 
world ? Is the same principle to be found dominating on 
that great scale ? Far from it. There, we are informed, 
the only rule is self-assertion : the all-determining law is 
relentless competition for superior advantage, — the con- 



THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIENCE. 477 

dition of obeying which is that you are to forego nothing, 
and never to miss an opportunity of pushing a rival over, 
and seizing the prey before he is on his feet again. We 
look without, and see the irresistible fact of selfish scram- 
ble ; we look*within, and find the irresistible faith of 
unselfish abnegation. So here, again, morals are unnat- 
ural, and nature is unmoral." 1 Now is this a true state- 
ment? or is it only a generalization arrived at by over- 
looking one half the evidence which nature lays before 
us ? The author of those frequently quoted lines, — 

" Who trusted God vras love indeed, 
And love, creation's final law, — 
Though nature, red in tooth and claw 
With ravin, shrieked against his creed," — 

anon reproaches himself for singing " so wildly." And I 
must believe that Dr. Martineau has, ere this, suffered 
pangs of remorse in view of a representation of our 
foster-mother so shamefully one-sided and unfair. Selfish 
scramble is no more fully illustrated in unconscious nature 
than the opposite principle of unselfish surrender. Egoism 
gives place to altruism in the realm of the not-yet-moral 
as well as in that of developed morality. I will not dwell 
upon the striking instances of fidelity to communal as 
distinguished from individual interests, exhibited on a 
great scale by the lower animals. I will not stop to con- 
sider all that self-sacrifice that is developed in connection 
with maternity, but will strike lower down in nature, 
below intelligent life, below sentient life, and draw my 
analogy from the vegetable world. 

"What do we find as regards the giving away of self in 
the history of a tree ? This history divides itself into two 
epochs, each of which is dominated by a process seem- 
ingly the reverse of that which prevails in the other. In 

1 Materialism, Theology, and Religion, p. 57. 



478 APPENDIX A. 

the first period self-assertion is the rule. The struggle 
for existence, at the expense of every surrounding thing 
that can be of use to the tree, is the apparent end and 
exhaustive expression of its activities. It robs the soil, 
it contests the possession of territory with other forms of 
vegetable life. It overshadows and destroys many weaker 
relations on its way to prosperity. Its roots burrow far 
and near, contending with other roots for every morsel of 
nutriment. It is, in fact, a greedy, insatiable thing that 
gets all it can, but never parts with any of its strength. 
But when this has been going on for years, — for decades, 
perhaps, — a most wonderful thing takes place. A flower 
makes its appearance. 

Were our experience limited to the growth of a single 
tree, the advent of this beautiful and marvelously adapted 
organism would be a thing utterly strange and unaccount- 
able in connection with the tree that has hitherto borne 
nothing but leaves. But more wonderful than the miracle 
of the flower is the miracle of the process which it ushers 
in, — a process the reverse of that which has hitherto 
characterized the tree. That which has been accumulated 
is now freely given up, and the energies of the plant are 
henceforth largely diverted into the production of that 
which is soon to be separated and altogether estranged 
from the producer. The whole process of flowering and 
fruit or seed bearing is of the nature of a free giving 
away of life substance in such a way that no return can 
ever be received. With many plants it is the giving up 
of all the life substance. They perish when the process 
is finished. In every case it is exhausting, and growth is 
interrupted by it. 

Am I, then, arguing that trees are moral? Not at 
all. They are, as Dr. Martineau says, unmoral. But the 
phenomena to which I have called attention prove that 



THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIENCE. 479 

morals are not the contradiction of natural processes. It 
is but an analogy. But it is one which Christ has sanc- 
tioned by repeated use for the illustration of the fact that 
spiritual life proceeds by a change of function from life 
that is not spiritual. The man who continues to live in 
his lower nature is a tree that bears nothing but leaves, 
The invariable characteristic and certain evidence of spir- 
itual life is fruit-bearing. The nation that has received 
the greatest blessings, but has failed to realize the plan of 
its existence, is thrust aside ; and the kingdom of God, 
taken from it, is given to a nation bringing forth the 
fruits thereof. In other passages, too numerous to men- 
tion, the same metaphor is used. 

Now this process of fruit-bearing supervening upon a 
process of an opposite tendency, which has prepared the 
way for it, is evolution. Let us, therefore, follow the 
analogy a little further, and see what light it is capable 
of throwing upon the proposition that morality is evolved 
from, or superinduced upon, that which is unmoral. 
Morality, as we know it, came into the world in connec- 
tion with man. If we entertain the hypothesis that man 
is derived from the lower animals by a process of differ- 
entiation, we may entertain also the hypothesis that his 
moral nature is derived, through differentiation, from that 
which is unmoral; and as I have elsewhere maintained 
that the former idea involves nothing which is at variance 
with a pure theology, so I shall now endeavor to show 
that the latter idea is in harmony with the loftiest con- 
ceptions of the origin and authority of conscience, — that 
it detracts nothing from the sacredness with which we 
have been accustomed to invest it, but, on the contrary, 
adds to our confidence in its dictates. 

Whenever we succeed in coordinating with the great 
body of our related ideas other ideas which have hitherto 



480 APPENDIX A. 

seemed separate and singular, we gain a sense of restful- 
ness and certainty about these which nothing else can 
give. It is like classifying a physical phenomenon which 
has before seemed out of relation or even opposed to 
other facts. I will, therefore, ask the reader to follow 
this analogy further, in the hope that it will help to es- 
tablish the reasonableness of the above position, and the 
unreasonableness of the assumption, so often made, that 
to affirm the evolution of the moral sense is to deny its 
reality. 

A point in the analogy to which I would call special 
attention is this : The blossom of a tree is evolved from 
that which, but for some mysterious differentiating 
power, would have been a leaf or cluster of leaves. The 
blossom is not evolved from the leaf, but, by virtue of 
some process which we cannot begin to trace, it has es- 
caped being a leaf and has become this thing which not 
only is marvelous in itself, but which is the first indica- 
tion of what seems to be a revolution in the nature of the 
tree. In other words, when a certain critical stage in the 
evolution of the plant has been reached, and its vital 
forces are to be directed into new channels for the attain- 
ment of higher results, this change is accomplished, not 
by the introduction of absolutely new organs, but by the 
adaptation of old ones in such a manner that new func- 
tions can be performed by them. But when they have 
been thus adapted we do not fail to recognize them as 
essentially different things. The fact that they have 
sprung from the same rudiments as leaves — and that 
there is sometimes, by a retrograde metamorphosis, such 
a reversion that leaves appear where we have learned to 
expect blossoms or parts of blossoms — does not obliter- 
ate or tend to obliterate the distinction between leaves, 
sepals, petals, stamens, and pistils. The flower as a whole, 



THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIENCE. 481 

and each part of the flower, has its own distinct charac- 
teristics, though all may be referred to a common type 
and traced back to a common origin. 

Now, scientific evolution as applied to the genesis of 
species is, fundamentally, the expansion of the idea of cre- 
ation made known to us in this and in kindred processes 
of the animal world. And it is of the utmost importance 
that we carefully distinguish between this and the numer- 
ous hypotheses framed and to be framed for the explana- 
tion of it. When we assent to the proposition that one 
thing is evolved from another, we do not necessarily com- 
mit ourselves to any of these hypotheses, none of which 
pretend to offer more than a partial explanation of the 
great fact. We commit ourselves only to the belief that 
one thing has proceeded from another by a process of 
differentiation. The word " evolution " — or, more prop- 
erly, epigenesis — does not imply that the whole contents 
of the thing said to be evolved previously existed, in the 
antecedents ; it affirms, on the contrary, that there not 
only may be but must be something in the result that did 
not exist in the antecedents. 

The necessity for putting a sharp emphasis on this sim- 
ple idea of evolution has been illustrated by some of the 
most eminent modern writers on ethics. It is only through 
failing to distinguish between essential evolution and hy- 
pothetical explanations of it that so acute a philosopher as 
the late Professor T. H. Green of Oxford, while making 
a most satisfactory statement of the existence of an evo- 
lutionary relationship between the higher and the lower 
instincts, could be able at the same time to assert the 
impossibility of applying the word evolution to this rela- 
tionship. His statement of evolution and his denial of it 
are embraced in the following sentence : " We may take 
it, then, as an ultimate fact of human history — a fact 



482 APPENDIX A. 

without which there would not be such a history, and 
which is not in turn deducible from any other history 
— that out of sympathies of animal origin, through their 
presence in a self-conscious soul, there arise interests as 
of a person in persons. Out of processes common to man's 
life with the life of animals, there arise for man, as there 
do not apparently arise for animals, 

* Relations dear and all the charities 
Of father, son, and brother ; ' 

and of those relations and charities, self-consciousness on 
the part of all concerned in them is the condition." 1 The 
words which I have italicized have explicit reference to 
the position of the author, - — that the social interest, as 
we know it, however dependent upon feelings of animal 
origin, cannot he said to have been evolved from them. 
The reason given is significant. The higher cannot have 
been evolved from the lower, because the lower " must 
have taken a new character " before they could issue in 
the higher. The evolution here denied, therefore, is an 
evolution without differentiation. But modern science 
knows nothing of such a theory. 

Probably much of the difficulty presented by the idea 
of evolution as related to morals would be removed if, 
instead of saying that one thing is evolved from another, 
it should be said " evolved in connection with" As we 
have already seen, it is not strictly true that blossoms are 
evolved from leaves. They are evolved from that some- 
thing, from those elements, which, undifferentiated, would 
have been leaves. So if we say, with regard to the moral 
sense, that it is evolved in connection with, or that, by 
a process of evolution, it is superinduced upon, the lower 
instincts, we shall keep closer to our analogy and avoid 
misconception. 

1 Prolegomena to Ethics, 



THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIENCE, 483 

It is rarely, if ever, safe to assert that one known prod- 
uct is directly evolved from another known product of a 
different kind ; for our powers of analysis are not equal 
to ascertaining with absolute certainty what the immedi- 
ate antecedent in any given case may be. What appears 
to be so may belong to a collateral line of descent. In 
some cases we are able to trace relationships so perfectly 
that little doubt of direct descent or derivation is left on 
our minds. But no one can rationally entertain the doc- 
trine of evolution unless he has a good degree of patience 
in view of the unknown. At many points in the series, 
what we see is apparently the introduction of a radically 
new factor ; nor can it be proved that it is not exactly 
what it seems. But the processes with which we are ac- 
quainted, and which seem to point to a uniform method 
running through all nature, lead us to suspect that this 
view of the case is not strictly true ; but that what ap- 
pears to us as absolutely new has been to some extent and 
in some way derived by the modification of elements al- 
ready in existence. There is a vast difference between 
this way of holding the doctrine and that which assumes 
to explain everything. 

The work of tracing a connection between things hith- 
erto deemed unconnected is to some minds a most intoxi- 
cating one, and from this intoxication has sprung great 
scandal to the word evolution. The conceit of account- 
ing for the existence of everything by the few factors 
known to us is, on the face of it, preposterous ; but that 
has not prevented such a conceit from being entertained, 
or from embodying itself in elaborate schemes. It is not 
strange that such schemes can be constructed. If there 
is any truth in evolution the whole world is related ; and 
factors that are not closely connected have still so much 
in common that they may be made to appear as antece- 



484 APPENDIX A. . 

dent and consequent, if only one is content to notice the 
similarities and disregard everything else. But the inevi- 
table result of this is the distortion and falsification of 
most of the elements dealt with. Each link in the series 
is made to appear something different from what it really 
is, in order to accommodate it to that which goes before 
and to that which follows. In every case it is the more 
highly evolved product that suffers most, since the ap- 
pearance of sufficiency can be secured only by emptying 
this of its most distinctive characteristics. This method 
and these results have been illustrated nowhere more 
fully than in the attempts which have been made to give 
a complete explanation of the genesis of the moral sense. 

Conscience, we are told, has been evolved from expe- 
riences of pain and pleasure. Now, if a botanist should 
attempt to demonstrate that blossoms are evolved from 
leaves, we should have a parallel to this. Experiences of 
pain and pleasure of a peculiar kind are very closely con- 
nected with conscience. They are frequently the results 
of right and wrong action, and they sometimes cooperate 
with conscience to secure obedience to its commands. If, 
therefore, the mind can be made to concentrate itself 
upon the fact of this relationship, it may be seduced into 
believing that pleasurable and painful experiences have 
been transformed into the ideas of right and wrong, and 
that the feelings of ought and ought not have grown out 
of the compulsions that nature and society have brought 
to bear upon us when we have transgressed their laws. 

But the results reached by this method are certainly not 
indorsed by our daily consciousness. They are indeed the 
negation of experience, — the flat contradiction of our 
deepest convictions. It is a matter of simple knowledge 
to every man who has acted from conscientious motives 
that the calculation of pain and pleasure has been no part 
of his conscientiousness. 



THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIENCE. 485 

Who has not, in reflecting upon the springs of conduct 
within himself, been forced to the confession of what are 
called mixed motives ? And who at such times has failed 
to recognize that this mixture was the association of ele- 
ments that were of an intrinsically opposite nature ? Self- 
ishness may lead a man to trifle with his convictions, and 
to wink hard at the substitution of interested motives for 
those which spring from a sense of duty. But when he 
looks himself squarely in the face he knows, as surely as 
he knows anything, that in so far as he is actuated by the 
calculation of personal pleasures and pains he is not dis- 
tinctively conscientious ; and that in so far as he is, over 
and above all else, conscientious, he is not actuated by a 
calculation of pleasures and pains as ends. 

Nor does the fact that immediate pleasures are sacri- 
ficed for remote, or possibly more enduring ones, bring us 
any nearer to the idea of conscience. A man may regulate 
his whole life with a view to remote happiness, and yet not 
be actuated in the least by a sense of duty. He may re- 
strain his passions, deny himself rest and amusement, 
undertake and persevere in uncongenial and wearing labor, 
and yet have no spark of conscientious motive in him. If 
the end which moves him is a purely selfish one, no amount 
of self-denial endured for its attainment, no degree of 
remoteness and no length of duration in the happiness 
sought, can make his life moral. 

In comparing, therefore, the conscience which we 
thought we had evolved with the conscience of every-day 
life, we find that the former is devoid of all the distinctive 
characteristics of the latter. From the desire of avoiding 
pain and securing pleasure, we have not been able to evolve 
anything approaching a moral motive. Vary the pleasure 
or pain as we will, the motive is always the same, — the 
desire of pleasure, — and we have not moved a step. The 



486 APPENDIX A. 

unavoidable deduction from this is either that this process 
is false, or that the conception of conscience, which is the 
uniform product of human experience, is false. If the 
process be true, then our notion of conscience must be 
untrue, and there is no such thing as a moral difference in 
actions. We cannot escape this by saying, as Mr. Herbert 
Spencer does, that, having lost the knowledge of this deri- 
vation of conscience, it stands for us as something differ- 
ent and higher than the recognized desire for pleasure. 
Hitherto, whatever may have been its origin, the moral 
sense has been a powerful factor in the lives of men, because 
they have believed in its distinctive character and its title 
to supreme authority. But to have found out that it is 
nothing but a somewhat obscure form of selfishness is to 
abolish it. 

But if, revolted by this conclusion, we try to retrace the 
path by which we have been led, we may discover that we 
are caught in a labyrinth of logic from which it is difficult 
to find the way out. Every turning brings us back, after 
a little, to the same point. Happiness of some kind, near 
or remote, can always be postulated as the outcome of 
obedience to conscience ; and, if happiness is the product, 
how can we escape the implication that happiness was the 
end and motive ? There is but one way out of this, that 
is, the way by which we came in, namely, assent to the 
assumption that anticipations of pain or pleasure are the 
only motives to action. Let us once recognize the fact that 
our primary instinctive impulses to action are altogether 
independent of and antecedent to experiences of pain and 
pleasure, and we are free. 

Genetically considered, pains and pleasures are the off- 
spring of our earliest impulses to action. Compliance 
with an instinct, like that which causes an animal to seek 
its food, may be followed by pleasure ; and the remem- 



THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIENCE. 487 

brance of it, in a higher animal, may be an additional 
incentive to repeat the experience. The same instinct, 
thwarted, may be followed by uneasiness and pain ; and 
this again is an additional motive to compliance. But 
neither pleasures nor pains were the original springs of 
action. They are the rewards and the reprimands of 
nature. It is indeed true that pleasure may be made an 
end in itself. But when it is so made we have evolution 
downward, not evolution upward. The resulting disorder 
declares plainly that such an arrangement is, for a moral 
being* unnatural. 

Is it, then, possible to class conscience as an instinct ? 
Let us see what is involved in the use of this word. Do 
we not mean by instinctive action an action to which we 
are impelled independently of our reason ? And is not an 
instinct, therefore, an impulse that appears to come to us 
from an external source ? If this is correct, it is obvious 
that what we understand by conscience is not fully de- 
scribed by the word " instinct," since there is in it a rational 
element that we can trace. We can clearly discern many 
of the influences which have combined to make our con- 
sciences what they are. Many of its decisions, which can- 
not be traced to our own reason, can be seen to have origi- 
nated in the reason of those who have gone before us. 
Even while we act instinctively from its guidance, we may 
analyze it. The question therefore arises, can that which 
may be analyzed and traced to human reason be called 
an instinct ? At the risk of wearying the reader, I must 
pause long enough on this point to make sure of the 
recognition of two kinds of instinct which are often con- 
fused. 

We begin our lives with instinct ; then in many directions 
we supersede instinct with reason ; then in some of these 
same directions we in part abandon reason and lean upon 



488 APPENDIX A. 

instinct. For example, the craving for food in an infant 
is a radical instinct ; but it is very far from being a per- 
fect guide to conduct. To become so, it has to be edu- 
cated. Without education it leads to excess, the excess 
creates disorder, the disorder induces an abnormal craving, 
and this in turn aggravates the disorder. 

Intelligence, the intelligence of the parent, comes in to 
regulate and train this instinct in such manner that it be- 
comes accustomed to a reasonable satisfaction, and has its 
importunity limited to reasonable intervals. Subsequently 
to this parental training the best results are reached through 
a long-continued and careful observation of the effects pro- 
duced upon the individual by different kinds of food, taken 
at different intervals. When by this induction nthe most 
perfect adaptation of food-taking to the particular life has 
been discovered and applied, the whole organism accepts 
this superinduced regimen ; and it forthwith stands with- 
out the rational supports which surrounded its formation. 
It is an acquired instinct, or habit, developed from a radi- 
cal instinct through the intervention of reason ; and this 
acquired instinct may, to some extent, be transmitted to 
posterity in the form of a tendency, just as the reverse 
tendency to intemperance may be transmitted. The same 
distinction has to be recognized in studying the instinct of 
animals. Some of these we must regard as radical ; they 
cannot be traced to anything lying farther back. But 
others we discover to be superinduced by experience, and 
bequeathed to succeeding generations. This latter form 
has been called by naturalists "lapsed intelligence." 

Now, does conscience, considered as an instinct, belong 
to the first or to the second class ? It belongs to both. 
There is an elementary conscience which we cannot ana- 
lyze. There is a derived complex conscience, the result of 
reason and experience, which we can analyze and study. 



THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIENCE. 489 

The first is an invariable element, the same (except as re- 
gards intensity) in every human being. It is the simple 
sense of duty, the " categorical imperative," the conviction 
of ought and ought not, of must and must not, in relation 
to certain actions to which the ideas of right and wrong 
have become attached. The other is this same simple 
conscience plus the results of personal enlightenment and 
of innumerable judgments of the human reason lying gen- 
erations deep behind us. The experience of the race is, 
to a greater or less extent, consolidated in this latter ; 
and, in the case of thoughtful men, experience and reason 
add distinctive characteristics which make the personal 
conscience a thing by itself. 

To many minds, this gradually formed, reasoned con- 
science appears as an instinct pure and simple, because 
they are not given to analyzing their mental processes ; 
and also because, in many cases, they have not used their 
own judgments, but have accepted a conscience that has 
come to them. The instinctive or executive part of this 
accepted conscience impresses itself daily upon their imagi- 
nations, while the rational or legislative process by which 
it was formed lies to a great extent beyond the range of 
their experience. There can be no question about our 
ability to trace the genesis of this complex conscience. 
There can hardly be a question about the usefulness of 
analyzing and studying it. But to consider this would 
carry us too far away from our subject. Having recog- 
nized the distinction between conscience as a radical and 
as a derived instinct, we must go back to the consideration 
of the former, that which I have called the simple sense 
of duty, the invariable factor. Is it possible for us to 
know anything about its evolution ? 

It is certainly very little that we can know about it. 
We cannot know much about any new product that comes 



490 APPENDIX A. 

into the world. Yet we are able, I think, to say something 
of the conditions and circumstances of its advent, and we 
can study its antecedents. To begin with, I think we may 
safely say that it originally came into being as the result 
of conflict in a soul possessed of reflective reason. If con- 
flict is not the only gate through which new elements come 
into the world, it certainly is the one through which most of 
the more highly evolved products enter ; and with regard to 
the sense of duty, we know that in the experience of the 
individual it dawns upon the consciousness only as the 
attendant of self-conflict. 

But conscience is not the necessary attendant of a di- 
vided self, for we find this in animals. Mr. Darwin has 
called attention to the sharp antagonism which often 
occurs in birds between two of their most powerful in- 
stincts, the maternal and the migratory. We are familiar 
with the strength of the former, which sometimes causes 
the most timid species to face danger in defense of their 
young. Yet the latter is so strong that, in the autumn, 
swallows and house-martins will frequently desert their 
young, leaving them to perish miserably in their nests. 
If we can reason in any degree from ourselves to animals, 
we must believe that, during the time of preparation for 
flight, many alternations of feeling are experienced be- 
fore the result is reached. We are familiar with such 
alternations in the case of birds when their nests are 
approached. At one moment fear is uppermost, and the 
limb of a neighboring tree is sought, but the maternal in- 
stinct again becomes the stronger, and the intruder is 
almost if not quite attacked. In the case of deserting 
the young for migration, the conflict is in all probability 
of longer continuance ; for the attention of the parent bird 
would be divided between the care of its young and the 
preparation for flight made by its fellows. Here, there- 



THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIENCE. 491 

fore, we seem to be on the very verge of the evolution of 
conscience. 

But something more than this is necessary ; something 
which we believe the bird does not possess, that is, the 
power of discerning a superiority in the impulse which 
urges it to the one action over that which urges it to the 
other. For the production of this we must have a self- 
reflecting soul. In the case of man (if we may entertain 
the hypothesis that there was once an anthropoid animal, 
not yet moral), let us suppose that in the crisis of a conflict 
between two instincts there some time emerged the percep- 
tion that one course of action would result in a superior or 
more satisfactory self than the other, and at the same time 
a sense of obligation to realize the superior self because 
superior. Conscience is evolved. I do not pretend to say 
how. It is there. It is there just as a blossom-bud is on 
the branch where all our former experience would have 
led us to expect only a leaf-bud. 

By what process of differentiation self-reflective intelli- 
gence has arisen in the race we shall never know, just as 
we can never know how it arises in the individual ; neither 
can any physical research disclose why this imperative of 
conscience should necessarily arise with it. I say arise 
with it ; for though we may in thought separate that part 
of conscience which I have called a radical instinct, yet it 
is only as the concomitant of reason that it has existence. 
It is always united with some conception which is its body 
or subject-matter ; and it is first known to us as enfor- 
cing some particular action or principle that has become 
identified with the idea of right. This action or principle 
becomes so associated with it that the two together make 
up what I have already called the complex conscience. 
To consider the instinctive element by itself, therefore, is 
in a measure an abstraction ; but it is not an arbitrary 
abstraction. 



492 . APPENDIX A. 

It is as if a throne of absolute authority were set up in 
the soul from the time when reason began to discriminate 
between its different impulses. When it first comes into 
view, this throne has a sovereign upon it in the shape of 
some particular interest or course of action ; and, so long 
as it retains this position, order and self-respect in the in- 
dividual depend upon the subjection of every other interest 
to this one. But there is that in expanding reason which 
ere long declares that this is only a provisional ruler. A 
larger conception of the same interest, or one lying back 
of it to which it must be referred, rises upon consciousness, 
and from this moment there is no peace till the new-comer 
is established upon the seat of power. This is the course 
of the development of conscience in the individual. It is 
the course, also, of its development in the race. As men 
became separated into nations, the rational element tended 
continually to differentiate the human conscience ; so that 
the results reached by one nation became in some respects 
the contradiction of those reached by another. Yet, 
through all changes, that other element, the imperative 
which demands loyalty to the throne under all circum- 
stances, has never changed. All men agree in their rec- 
ognition of duty and the obligation to obey it, but they 
differ in their ideas of what constitutes duty. 

Shall we, then, say that the complex or developed con- 
science has in it a divine element combined with a human 
element ? That the instinctive part is God acting directly 
in the soul? That the rational part is purely human? 
To say this would be to make a clearly denned and easily 
grasped distinction. But it would not be the truth. We 
must, indeed, recognize God in the imperative of duty. 
There is no other rational explanation of the phenomenon. 
For although some instincts may be analyzed and traced 
back to creature intelligence, this one cannot be. We may 



THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIENCE, 493 

believe that it has come into the soul by a natural process ; 
but to believe this is not to deny its divine origin, unless 
we at the same time deny the divine origin of natural 
process. 

I hold this to be the truth : that, wherever we come upon 
factors in evolution that defy analysis, it is our privilege 
and duty to recognize God as acting immediately. In the 
physical world we may anticipate that what we regard as 
finalities will prove not to be so. Our analysis is arrested 
at a certain point, but there is nothing which forbids us to 
hope that this limit may be passed. But in the sphere of 
mind there are certain limits which seem to us in the nature 
of things impassable. To other intelligences they may not 
be impassable. Yet so long as certain factors remain final 
to us, we may see in them the finger and the voice of God. 
This is not unscientific. It is simply to rest the matter on 
the one basis possible to our minds. It is not to assume 
that no further analysis can be made, but that no amount 
of analysis ever has or can arrive at an originating cause 
other than intelligent will. After all our research, we can 
render to ourselves no rational account of that which we 
have discovered, unless — including all that is attributable 
to process in a parenthesis — we begin as before with God. 
I would therefore say that in the imperative of conscience, 
however it has come to be, we must recognize God as act- 
ing directly, in the same sense that we recognize Him as 
acting directly in other radical instincts. 

But, it may be asked, is there nothing peculiar in this 
instinct that raises it above others ? There certainly is ; 
but this peculiarity is to be traced to that with which it is 
associated. It is from the rational element that the simple 
imperative of duty derives its distinction. It is to this 
that we are indebted for that illumination which obliges us 
to discriminate between actions as right or wrong, in dis- 



494 APPENDIX A, 

tinction from their pleasantness or their unpleasantness. 
But this rational element is the variable element ; it leads 
men and nations to results so wide apart as to make the 
morality of one the immorality of another. Have we not, 
therefore, reduced all morality to the status of a purely 
human product ? And have we not relinquished our hold 
upon the idea that there is such a thing as absolute, im- 
mutable morality ? 

If we could discover no limit to the variability of the 
moral judgment this would be true. But here, as in every 
other department of nature, there is a uniformity underly- 
ing the diversity. There is a stream of tendency in the 
human reason that makes for righteousness. There are 
certain great lines of development which we can clearly 
see to be in the direction of normal development, and oth- 
ers which as plainly declare themselves to be abnormal and 
unnatural. The fundamental principles of the highest 
morality (Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
heart, and thy neighbor as thyself) are dimly shadowed 
forth in the least developed conscience. As Professor 
Green has truly remarked, " It is not the sense of duty to 
a neighbor, but the practical answer to the question, Who 
is my neighbor ? that has varied." Nor is this less true of 
the first half of the great law. It is not the sense of duty 
to God, but the answer to the question, Who and what is 
God ? that has varied. So, again, it is not the sense of 
duty to self, but the answer to the question, In what does 
duty to self consist ? that has varied. The recognition of 
these three relations, and the sense of responsibility and 
obligation in connection with them, are the common data 
of the human reason for the development of morality. 

God has given us sufficient materials to work upon, but 
He has not done the work for us. He has given us far less 
than is claimed by some who would find the fully developed 



THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIENCE. 495 

way in conscience. But He has given us here in the same 
proportion as elsewhere. Evolution, to use a favorite ex- 
pression of Charles Kingsley, discloses to us God in the 
act of " making things make themselves." Everywhere in 
nature we discover that the original bestowment to the 
creature was far less than we had supposed, and that the 
results which we see around us are, much more than we 
had supposed, the outcome of a cooperative activity. 

It necessarily follows that these results, evolved as they 
have been through the agency of imperfect creatures, can- 
not have the same idea of perfection and of finality at- 
tached to them that they would have when regarded as the 
immediate gifts of God. This I must accept with regard 
to my own complex moral sense. It has been evolved 
from simple data introduced into the world with the advent 
of man, — data which nothing can alter. But the com- 
plete evolution from these is not yet. Therefore, while 
recognizing the divine authority of the ultimate basis of 
conscience, the God-given data from which it took its rise, 
I not only may, but must, hold my complex, partially- 
evolved conscience as an imperfect thing, — a thing which 
I may reasonably hope will become less imperfect. The 
past history and the present condition of the world conspire 
to teach me that this complex conscience is in part an 
inheritance which has come to me as the result of ages 
of conflict and experience, assisted by revelation, and that 
it is in part a thing of my own making, for which I am 
responsible ; but that does not in any degree obscure the 
fact that the moral sense on which it rests is as absolute 
and sacred as God himself. The same history that teaches 
me the variableness and the immaturity of the one teaches 
me as certainly the finality and absoluteness of the other. 

Nor is this the extent of my recognition of God in con- 
science. The author of our being has not launched us on 



496 APPENDIX A. 

a sea of conflict, with vague directions, and left us to our- 
selves. In the intelligence that is leading the human 
race, as well as in that which at the beginning provided 
for it, we may discern the living and ever-present God. 
Conscience, in its highest activity, stands apart from and 
above us. As often as we seem to ourselves to be ap- 
proaching some ideal of conduct that has been the goal 
of our striving, the rational conscience forthwith begins to 
outline for us a new ideal, higher up on the moral scale ; 
and the instinctive conscience, with the same insistence 
that characterized its earliest demands, bids us reach it. 
I say conscience in its highest activity ; for there is a 
conscience that reposes upon ordinances and laws, — a 
conscience of prescription. Its authority centres in hu- 
man legislators and priests ; and we are under it as under 
tutors and governors. 

Conscience in its highest activity, on the other hand, 
derives its sanctions from principles and moving ideals ; 
it is progressive, transcendental ; it follows the prophets. 
In every living society these tendencies are, to some ex- 
tent, in conflict ; but it is a normal conflict, One without 
which the highest results were unattainable. The ballast 
of a ship may not say to the sails, I have no need of thee. 
It is only by the conflicting action of sails and ballast 
that the ends of navigation are realized. Yet, as a con- 
scious, constructive agent is higher in the scale of being 
than the mechanism through which it works, so is the 
rational progressive conscience higher than that which is 
relatively stationary. 

The ideal-forming power is at once the most mysteri- 
ous and the most distinctive characteristic of man. It 
does not necessarily subserve high purposes. It is the 
faculty by which man sinks below the brute in progres- 
sive depravity, as well as that by which he climbs to a 



THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIENCE. 497 

perpetually higher plane of being. The sense of incom- 
pleteness and the consciousness of the possibility of a 
more perfectly satisfied self may give rise, on the one 
hand, to purely selfish ideals, in which gratified ambition 
or unbounded pleasure occupy the supreme place, and, 
on the other, to conceptions of a less definite but more 
exalted nature. In the pursuit of both these classes of 
ideals the soul falls short of perfect satisfaction. But 
there is this great difference : In the first case the end is 
soon reached, and there is nothing beyond. Selfishness 
returns upon self only to intensify the feeling of empti- 
ness. But when moral satisfactions constitute the ideal 
of life, though they never yield the perfect content and 
rest that they seemed to offer, yet there is no disgust with 
self for that which has been wrought. Nor does con- 
science withhold a reward. It says " well done," though 
it may never say " well enough done." And though 
there is always a better, standing beyond the realized 
good, which makes us dissatified, yet the very presence 
of this better inspires new life, and expectation never 
fails. 

In the moral ideal, then, we have found the true nisus 
of human evolution. We often hear the phrase " blind 
evolution." Unquestionably the evolution of the human 
soul is, in a measure, blind. It knows not the full cause 
or measure of its dissatisfaction, and it invariably under- 
estimates the length and importance of the conflict on 
which it has entered. It is a deceptive evolution, in that 
the higher self, when reached, has not in it the full satis- 
faction that it promised. But the question as to the ex- 
tent of man's blindness in evolution is a matter of indif- 
ference as compared with that which relates to the nature 
of the " power not ourselves " that has worked hitherto, 
and that now works. The question as to the blindness of 



498 APPENDIX A. 

this power is the watershed between optimism and pes- 
simism, between faith and despair, between a joyous en- 
thusiasm and apathy. The answer to it has determined 
the character of one great civilization after another. 
The root conception out of which the Hindoo and Bud- 
dhist view of human life sprung was such an answer, and 
the deadly apathy of the Hindoo mind is its fruit. What 
other result could follow the education of generations in 
the belief that man is the victim of illusions, that he lives 
in a perpetual dream, tantalized by deceitful promises, 
and that the greatest evil of existence is the desire to be ? 
But to him who trusts the incentives of his developing 
moral nature, the fact of human blindness is the strong- 
est reason for faith in an Intelligence, not his own, that 
is leading him. He cannot comprehend that Intelligence, 
for he is not yet able to comprehend the perfect ideal of 
humanity which he follows after. But as he knows the 
direction and some of the characteristics of the one, so 
he is able with confidence to infer the great characteris- 
tics of the other. The more nearly he approaches to the 
perfect type of man, the more truly will he be able to 
conceive of God. 



APPENDIX B. 

THE NECESSITY OF CONFLICT. 

Our imaginations work most nimbly in their construc- 
tion of a world of vitality and happiness from which all 
forms of conflict have been banished- But we have to 
remember that all such creations are pure abstractions, — 
dreams that find no indorsement in reality. Conflict is 
in the nature of things. Life cannot exist without it. 
The very first movement in the quickening of a germ is 
antagonism against forces that make for dissolution ; and 
every successive movement is a sustained antagonism. 
Life struggles with death. The dormant principle that 
till now gave no hint of its existence, having become ac- 
tive and aggressive, lives by what it conquers. It trans- 
forms the material that surrounds it, and makes it minis- 
ter to its own necessities. And what is true of this first 
stage of existence is true to the end of it. Life is a 
struggle, not alone or preeminently against other lives, 
but, more constantly and necessarily, against those very 
forces of nature that are the occasion of its vitality. 

This truth has been expressed by the physiologist 
Bichat in a definition of life which, to our ordinary appre- 
hension of the matter, is most startling. He calls it " the 
sum total of the functions which resist death." The sup- 
ply of food, to secure which man engages in a hand-to- 
hand encounter with the world, is, when obtained, only 
the material with which to carry on a ceaseless battle 
with the oxidizing and destroying power of the air which 



500 APPENDIX B. 

he breathes. The reality of this struggle is not apparent 
to those who, because of vigor, are easily superior in the 
strife. Conflict is to them the joy of existence. It pro- 
duces only exhilaration and the consciousness of well- 
being. But when the life powers begin to flag, then there 
is no doubt about it. 

Again, let us observe that life expands and increases 
in the direction of conflict. The law of mechanics, that 
movement is always in the line of the least resistance, 
does not hold when we come into the world of organized 
life. We cannot, indeed, reverse the proposition, and say 
that progress is in the line of the greatest resistance ; for, 
beyond a given point, the pressure of the opposing forces 
becomes wholly or in part fatal. The life principle is 
engaged in a losing struggle ; and unless retrogression is 
checked, the stimuli that were the occasions of life become 
the agents of " natural selection " for the removal of the 
unfit. But so long as there is progress, it is in that direc- 
tion where the battle is hotly contested. 

To say this is but another way of stating the fact that 
organisms develop most on that side which is most active. 
Animals that are determined in the direction of a preda- 
tory life develop skill and strength for attack. Those that 
are determined in an opposite direction develop swiftness 
to escape, or cunning to elude the predatory enemy. One 
great class of the laborers of Constantinople, the boatmen, 
have enormously developed arms ; and another great class, 
the hamals or burden-carriers, have a most remarkable 
superiority in legs and backs. The Arab develops strength 
for enduring heat by his resistance to the burning rays 
of a desert sun. The Esquimaux develops strength for en- 
during cold by his resistance to the Arctic winters. The 
negro of the Gaboon River acquires the power of defying 
the deadly malaria of that region, and his descendant of 



THE NECESSITY OF CONFLICT. 501 

the American rice-swamps retains that power by continu- 
ing to face the enemy. 

It is unnecessary for us to enlarge on this point. Wher- 
ever we look we see the principle exemplified. As by a 
thousand different languages we have reiterated to us the 
lesson that many of those arrangements in the universe, 
which we have been in the habit of considering purely pre- 
judicial to life, are in truth the indispensable conditions and 
promoters of it. Remove them and there would be no life. 
There would be simply equilibrium, stagnation. Had they 
not been called into play, there would have been no crea- 
tion. To find fault with them is simply to take the ground 
that non-existence is better than existence. While, there- 
fore, there is the same necessity for regarding these agencies 
as pain-producing, we must at the same time recognize the 
fact that all the joy and gayety of animated nature proceed 
from them. We cannot conceive of life under other con- 
ditions. We have no grounds for assuming that it is pos- 
sible under other conditions. Neither can we imagine hap- 
piness in the absence of either class of factors. There 
cannot be joy unless there are wants to be met. There 
can be no exhilaration except in the consciousness, real or 
illusory, of movement toward something better. There is 
no such thing as satisfaction except in the removal of dis- 
satisfaction. The happiness of rest even is conditioned 
upon fatigue, and the recovery of a lost position. 

The rudimentary nature of our self-knowledge is most 
strikingly illustrated by the persistent blundering of human 
beings in their pursuit of happiness ; a blundering which 
has its cause in an utter misconception of the nature of it, 
and of the relation in which it stands to effort. One form 
of this misconception presents happiness to the imagina- 
tion as a permanent state which may be produced by the 
possession of every external object of desire. Another 



502 APPENDIX B. 

indicates it as the state which supervenes when, all wants 
having been gratified, there remains nothing to long for or 
strive after. It is this conception that lies at the basis of 
the Hindoo philosophy, and expresses itself in the doctrines 
of maya (illusion) and nirvana (the cessation of personal 
consciousness). The experience of life uniformly teaches 
that no object of desire, when attained, affords the content 
which it promised while it was yet an object of pursuit. 
The wise man, therefore, recognizing the deceitful nature 
of all the direct results of human striving, arid seeing, 
also, that continued effort for satisfaction only gives birth 
to a never-ending series of wants, comes to the conclusion 
that a cessation of wants is the one thing to be coveted. 

Solomon, or the writer who personates him in the Book 
of Ecclesiastes, goes over much the same ground. He is 
possessed of everything that a human being can be pos- 
sessed of, — intellectual power, cultivated tastes, unbounded 
wealth, and the absolute command of his fellow-men. 
With such an equipment he gives himself to the task of 
discovering the secret of happiness. He turns his energies 
in every conceivable direction, only to find that the disap- 
pointment encountered in one pursuit is much like that en- 
countered in another. In every case, when the quest has 
been carried as far as he is able to carry it, and he pauses 
to contemplate the direct results of his efforts, his soul 
sickens within him. As completed products they are 
utterly devoid of interest, and instead of giving happiness 
they weary and annoy him. 

The truth of the picture as an illustration of human mis- 
conception and folly is most clearly marked in the circum- 
stance of repetition. The same experiment is tried over 
and over again with the same results, and yet without any 
approach to a discovery of the principle underlying the 
uniformity. When the pursuit of wisdom is seen to yield 



THE NE&SSITY OF CONFLICT. 503 

only an increase of sorrow, he gives his life to mirth and 
wine, without any question as to the soundness of the 
principle on which he is working ; when this, in turn, is 
seen to be only vexation of spirit, he enters with the same 
ardent expectation upon a variety of other pursuits. He 
gives his whole mind to the construction of great works 
and beautiful houses till his inventive powers are ex- 
hausted ; he devotes himself to horticulture and arboricul- 
ture ; he makes collections of all kinds ; and finally he cul- 
tivates music. But when all is finished he can only say of 
the accumulated results that they are " vanity and vexation 
of spirit." He bemoans himself bitterly because of this 
repeated disappointment. His conclusion is that all is 
vanity, or, in modern phrase, that this is the worst possible 
world, and that life is not worth living. " Therefore I 
hated life." 

Let us clearly observe that all this disappointment and 
the dismal conclusion are the outcome of a concentration 
of attention upon the external direct results of human 
activity, coupled with utter blindness as to the lesson 
taught by the indirect results. Pursuing happiness as a 
direct end, as a thing that can be captured, caged, and pos- 
sessed, he grasps nothing but emptiness ; and this so fills 
his thoughts that he can find no consolation in the remem- 
brance of that happiness which, during the whole course 
of varied activities, has flowed through his soul, as it were 
from the side. He acknowledges that his heart rejoiced 
in all his labor. But it is a sore grievance to him that it 
has always ceased with the labor, that he cannot find a 
way to generate it except as the indirect result of effort 
and the overcoming of difficulties ; in short, that he cannot 
produce an environment which will pour happiness into 
him as a passive recipient. 

Again, reflection will show us that happiness does not 



504 APPENDIX B. 

continue to flow from any fully realized state of being, 
any more than it does from the possession of external 
acquisitions. The desire of all desires, the constant ele- 
ment in all healthful human life, is the yearning to become. 
What, then, shall we say of the pleasures of idleness ? I 
think it is safe to say that they are non-existent. Absolute 
idleness is absolute wretchedness. What we call idleness 
is simply a relative thing. It is a condition in which ac- 
tivities are largely unconscious. Rest may, indeed, be 
happiness. But rest is recuperation. It is a condition of 
activity and effort on the part of the vegetative processes, 
and in healthful organisms the sense of enjoyment gives 
place to uneasiness and a craving for activity as soon as 
the waste has been repaired. 

Happiness, then, is the concomitant of progress. It is 
the singing of the soul, the rejoicing of the creature in 
prosperity of being. It is the consciousness that the ends 
of existence are being realized. It is Nature's indorsement 
of effort, the constant attendant of its evolutionary process. 
More than this even, it is to some extent the guide and 
director of it. It is, indeed, true, that men actually de- 
velop along widely divergent lines, and find happiness in so 
doing. But we have to remember that our truest evolution 
depends upon the development of many faculties, and that 
much of this development takes place consecutively. The 
energy of our life-current streams now in one direction, 
now in another, and in each happiness attends it so long as 
the activity is normal and not excessive. It is possible for 
us to have a considerable degree of it even while realizing 
the ends of being in a very partial and one-sided way. 
But this imperfect way cannot be long pursued without the 
production of a counterbalancing unhappiness. One of 
two things takes place. Either the one-sided develop- 
ment narrows into an all-absorbing, devouring passion, like 



THE NECESSITY OF CONFLICT. 505 

avarice or greed of power, or it runs itself out into the 
dreariness and emptiness of ennui. There is no true de- 
velopment in either case, but, on the one hand, a morbid 
cancer-like growth, that eats up the very springs of life 
and joy and, on the other, the failing of desire and the 
cessation of all movement. 

Evolution and happiness, then, depend on the constant 
springing of new wants. Except the satisfaction of one 
want plants at the same time the germ of another, there 
is an end of progress in any given direction. Wants, 
therefore, the most mysterious outcome of the process, are 
at the same time its motive power. There is no intelli- 
gent evolution without them. They are the rungs of the 
ladder by which we mount. Whence they come we know 
not. Why, when one want is satisfied, another higher up 
on the scale should take its place, we cannot begin to con- 
ceive. Rational creatures though we be, these unforeseen 
increments of evolution never cease to surprise us. Every 
time a new want makes its appearance we awake to the 
fact that we are new creatures. It seemed, as we looked 
forward, as if the requirements of life would be met by 
the satisfaction of wants of which we were then conscious. 
But now, while the old creature is satisfied, the new one 
has all the restlessness and importunity of youth. This 
is the pledge to us of the possibility of further evolution 
and of attendant happiness. The true line of progressive 
being, therefore, is clearly indicated to be that in which 
there will be no cessation of wants that may be progres- 
sively realized. If such a continuous development is pos- 
sible, and if we can discover its direction, we have good 
reason to believe that we have a definite knowledge of 
the main drift of human evolution. 

But happiness is not the only worthy end of evolution. 
There is the achievement of moral character. Could this 



506 APPENDIX B. 

have been secured by a method radically different from 
that which has been made known to us ? A state of per- 
fectly adjusted social relations may be conceived of in- 
dependently of a process of overcoming. Such a world 
might have been, so far as we can see, created by a sov- 
ereign mandate. But from the thought of a world so 
created we must be careful to eliminate every idea of 
morality. And this is just what the philosophers, who 
find the goal of evolution in the cessation of conflict, more 
or less consciously do. Mr. Herbert Spencer manipulates 
the word right until it comes to mean nothing more than 
agreeable, and then distinctly tells us that " among the 
best examples of absolutely right actions to be named are 
those arising where the nature and the requirements have 
been moulded to one another before social evolution be- 
gan." l His illustration of this is the relation that exists 
between a healthy mother and a healthy infant, while 
imparting and receiving food. 

The goal of such an evolution is essentially a return to 
its starting-point ; there has been no gain except in com- 
plexity. The type of the perfectly moral man is most 
nearly approximated by those exceptional persons who 
have led decorous lives because they have been carefully 
screened from everything involving conflict and tempta- 
tion. These are to-day the most advanced fruits of hu- 
man evolution. But if this is a correct rendering of the 
great world process, we cannot avoid the conclusion that 
the fully developed man will be far less blessed, less noble, 
less happy, than many of those who fought his battles for 
him. 

Is, then, a continuous development possible ? Can we 
discover that true line of progress on which there will be 
no cessation of wants that may be successively gratified ? 

1 Data of Ethics, p. 261. 



THE NECESSITY OF CONFLICT. 507 

I think we are speaking truly when we say that love is a 
want ; that the highest love is a moral want, and it can be 
kept in existence only by the continuance of that moral 
energy that has given birth to it. Love to God would 
not have the moral character that it has if it could have 
come into the human soul without conflict. The greatest 
power which rational man has is the power of training 
his wants. " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God." In 
this we touch the very spring and root of responsible 
self-creation. Our love grows in the direction of our 
efforts. In its germinal stages love to God is the re- 
sponse of the soul to a naturally, divinely implanted ideal. 
When this response becomes active in voluntary effort, 
the indirect increment of such effort is a higher idea of 
God and of self as related to Him. If we may conceive 
the evolution of a soul as a succession of stages, this pro- 
cess is repeated at every stage. The ideal expands, striv- 
ings are renewed, love deepens, the moral personality 
moves on to a fuller realization of itself. 

There is no conceivable end to such a process, for effort 
and overcoming need never cease. We may not, indeed, 
have to strive forever against a lower self, but there is no 
conceivable limit to external fields of activity. Even with 
our present environment, progress is most rapid and most 
real, not when conflict is directed immediately against 
self, but when we are engaged in helping others to fight 
the good fight. And as we have been permitted to be 
workers together with God on this present stage of ac- 
tion, we may reverently believe that, through all changes 
of environment, we shall continue to be co-laborers with 
Him who in all nature manifests himself as overcoming. 



INDEX. 



Agassiz, Louis, 150. 

Arago, 104. 

Arnold, Matthew, 361. 

Bagehot, Walter, 380, 410. 
Bain, Professor, 57, 172, 173. 
Bichat, 499. 
Binet, M. Alfred, 180, 181, 198- 

200, 204, 218, 219-221. 
Brooks, Professor W. K., 343, 

344, 346. 

Challis, Professor, 101, 102. 
Church, Dean, 396, 397. 
Clerk-Maxwell, 104. 
Clifford, Professor, 174. 
Cooke, Professor J. P., 98, 115, 

143, 165, 197. 
Cope, Professor E. D., 156, 157, 

259, 327-329, 337, 379. 
Crichton-Browne, Sir James, 220, 

221. 

D'Alembert, 102. 

Darwin, Charles, 260-265, 284, 

490 
Darwin, Dr. Erasmus, 258. 
De Coulanges, Fustel, 381, 386- 

388, 432. 
De Quincey, Thomas, 399. 
Descartes, 228, 229. 

Eimer, Theodor, 269, 271, 273, 

274, 298, 302, 303. 
Euler, 102. 

Faradav, Michael, 176. 
Fichte," 39-42, 44-47, 63, 77, 
78. 



Gray, Dr. Asa, 260. 

Green, Professor T. H., 481, 482. 

Haeckel, Ernst, 329, 330. 
Hamilton, Sir William, 121, 122. 
Hartmann, Edward von, 109, 259, 

330-341. 
Hegel, 39, 41-45, 47, 48, 63, 

123. 
Heine, Heinrich, 35. 
Herbert, Thomas Martin, 185. 
Hering, Dr Ewald, 207, 209. 
Huxley, Professor Thomas, 88, 

141, 201, 215-217. 

James, Professor William, 319. 
Jevons, Professor, 175, 177, 255, 
256. 

Kant, Emmanuel, 33, 36, 76-78, 

83, 119-121, 129. 
Kessler, Professor, 353, 354. 
Krapotkin, Prince, 352, 353. 

Lamarck, 259, 260. 

Lange, Albert, 35. 

Lecky, 386, 427, 432. 

Le Conte, Dr. Joseph, 144, 145, 

147, 148. 
Leibnitz, 194. 
Lewes, G. H., 152, 155-157, 210, 

269, 270, 301, 302. 
Lotze, Hermann, 91, 92, 95, 96, 

105, 106, 190, 196, 231, 232, 

256, 257. 

Martineau, Dr. James, 476, 

477. 
Maudsley, Dr., 361, 362. 



510 



INDEX. 



Mencius, 459. 
Mendelejeff, 142. 
Mulford, Dr. Elisha, 240. 
Murphy, J. J., 259, 325, 326. 

Nageli, 269, 271, 272, 274. 
Newman, Cardinal John Henry, 

11, 364, 365, 402, 403, 405, 423, 

439. 
Newton, Sir Isaac, 103, 177. 

Pfleiderer, Dr., 35. 

Ribot, 296. 

Riehet, M. Charles, 180, 181. 

Romanes, 298, 300, 301. 

Schopenhauer, Arthur, 35, 109, 

337. 
"Scottish Philosophy," 124. 



Seth, Professor, 43, 44, 47, 48. 
Spencer, Herbert, 39, 51-60, 62, 

63, 65, 67-75, 77-79, 109, 172, 

184, 185, 188, 189, 201, 202, 

269, 486, 506. 
Spinoza, 225, 228-230. 
Stallo, J. B., 92, 97, 99, 100, 102, 

157-159. 
Stephen, Leslie, 455. 

Taylor, Isaac, 394. 
Thomson, Sir William, 99. 
Tyndall, Professor John, 176. 

Uhlhorn, Dr., 390, 39L 

Wallace, Alfred Russell, 265. 
Weismann, 266, 267, 274, 282, 

296. 
Witwer, Professor, 99. 



/SuH 



